Posts Tagged ‘CAST’
Thursday, December 7th, 2017
This week on Thursday, December 14th, the second annual edition of REUSE 2017 will unfold in Silicon Valley. It’s a gathering crafted specifically for the vendors of IP blocks, and now whole sub-systems, those pieces of the puzzle which allow the vendors’ customers to design and produce electronic products more efficiently and with better results.
It goes without saying that IP is a pivotal part of the semiconductor supply chain today. Organizations like Arm and Synopsys reap huge benefits from being among the principal suppliers of that IP. But there are hundreds of IP companies in the world – big, medium, and small – that also provide IP.
Potentially, they could all be participating in something like Reuse 2017. Arm, for instance, is participating in the conference, along with dozens of smaller companies. Synopsys, however, is not.
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Tags: Achronix, Aldec, Andes Technology, Aphion, Archband, ARM, Avery Design Systems, CAST, Certus Semiconductor, ChipEstimate.com, City Semiconductor, Corigine, DAC, eFabless, FlexLogix, Intel, Intrinsic ID, IP-SoC, Menta, Mixel, Mobile Semiconductor, Mobiveil, Moortec, NSCore, NVM Engines, OmniDesign, Open-Silicon, QuickLogic, Reuse 2017, RISC-V, Samsung, Semi IP Systems, SiFive, Silicon Creations, Silvaco, Sintegra, SmartFlow, Sofics, Sonics, Surecore, Synopsys, True Circuits, Uniquify
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Thursday, September 15th, 2016
Synopsys has a problem. Per Norm Kelly, speaking at the ESD Alliance panel on September 14th in Silicon Valley, Synopsys loses fully a third of the revenue they’re owed each year for their vast catalog of IP because it’s stolen by Cheaters and used without paying any licensing or royalty fees.
Kelly said Synopsys earns about $200 million per year selling IP, and loses another $100 million to theft. Cheaters are a real problem, he lamented, and as Director of License Compliance for Synopsys he should know. Kelly did not have the floor to share these laments, however, until Warren Savage, GM of IP at Silvaco, opened the meeting.
Speaking from the podium as moderator of the evening’s discussion, Savage said the real problem is the bumblers, those designers and companies who lose track of licensing obligations for IP that was either purchased some time ago, or was brought into the design effort on a data stick fished out of the pocket of someone who’s joined the organization through a poorly managed M&A.
In other words, when Chuckles the Clown uses IP, often as not he doesn’t realize some monies are owed to the third-party IP vendor who created it in the first place. Savage offered this statistic: On an average SoC today, there are 150 to 200 blocks of IP, but only a small percentage of those blocks are actually paid for.
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Tags: Accellera, CAST, Certus, Eric Stein, ESD Alliance, IP fingerprinting, KPMG, PwC, Rob Ballow, Silicon Creations, Silvaco, SoC Solutiosn, Synopsys, The Core Store, True Circuits, Warren Savage
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Wednesday, June 18th, 2014
Monday at DAC 2014 in San Francisco was IP Day. Part of the day’s program included a panel featuring entrepreneurs pursuing the business of third-party IP: CAST’s Hal Barbour, Truechip Solutions’ Shishir Gupta, IPextreme’s Warren Savage, Methods2Business’ Marleen Boonen, and Recore Systems’ Dirk Logie.
After the panel, I had a chance to speak with Hal Barbour, CEO at CAST. I asked him if the received wisdom is correct – most innovation in silicon IP comes from small companies.
Hal said, “Traditionally, almost all innovation in the SIP business has come from small entrepreneurial companies. Large companies have gained their position through aggressive acquisitions, and not through internal development. Unless things change in unforeseen ways, it’s going to be difficult for the large companies to dramatically change this model.”
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Tags: 51st Design Automation Conference, CAST, DAC 2014, Dirk Logie, Hal Barbour, IPextreme, Marleen Boonen, Methods2Business, Recore Systems, Shishir Gupta, Truechip Solutions, Warren Savage
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Thursday, May 22nd, 2014
It’s just amazing that DAC has become so thoroughly a show about IP that there are two major parties happening in San Francisco in June that have IP in their name: HOT IP Party and Stars of IP Party.
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Tags: AdaptIP, ARM, Atrenta, Cadence, CAST, Certus, DAC 2014, Dassault Systemes, Denali, Design Automation Conference, HOT IP Party, IPextreme, Jim Hogan, Rambus, Semico, SFCASA, Sonics, Stars of IP Party, Synopsys, TrueCircuits, TSMC, Warren Savage
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Thursday, May 1st, 2014
Two things happened as a result of falling and breaking my right arm early on the morning of April 19th in Monterey: I instantly became a ‘Lefty’ for the first time in my life, and I missed Warren Savage’s presentation at EDPS later that day.
Warren is CEO and President of IPextreme, and I kid you not when I say that what he doesn’t know about the IP industry isn’t worth knowing. That’s why I wanted to hear Warren’s talk, and why I was very happy to talk to him this week about my Dick Tracy keychain project.
How do I learn to be a knowledgeable customer of the IP industry, I asked Warren, particularly when my hypothetical wearable is something I could really use right now: An SoC-based gadget, built with oodles of IP, to wear on my left wrist that’s got one small button to remotely unlock my car, one that will start my car, one that will open or close the garage door, one that will tell me if I’ve got enough milk in the fridge, one that will turn the heat up and down at home even if I’m not there, and prosaically, one that will show me the time.
Of course, now that I can’t use my right hand to push the buttons on the device strapped to my left wrist, I no longer want buttons. I want the thing to respond to voice commands – “Unlock.” “Ignition.” “Garage.” “Got milk?” “Set temp.” “Time?” – simple instructions that should only produce results when it’s my voice and nobody else’s.
Warren was extremely informative during our phone call. He understood I wasn’t looking for specific help with my design, but how to shop for the IP to go into my design. I started by telling him that my research into IP has so far included conversations with:
CAST – Hal Barbour, Nikos Zervas, and Paul Lindemann
Sonics – Grant Pierce, Raymond Brinks
Adapt IP – Mac McNamara
S3 – Dermot Barry, Darren Hobbs
To further clarify the information gleaned from these people, my questions for Warren were very succinct, as were his answers.
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Tags: Adapt IP, ARM, CAST, EDPS, Faraday, GSA, Imagination Technologies, IPextreme, S3 Group, Sonics, Synopses, Unichip, Warren Savage
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Thursday, February 13th, 2014
At last month’s DesignCon in Santa Clara, I went looking for some IP advice to help in assembling the bits and pieces for my Dick Tracy key chain/wristband design project. I got no farther than the CAST booth, because those guys had answers to all of my questions.
After an hour-long conversation with CEO Hal Barbour, COO Nikos Zervas, and PR & Media Rep Paul Lindemann, I’m quite sure no IP company, small and large, could be better at partnering with a product team looking for IP selection guidance.
We first discussed the processor core; CAST sells an 8-bit family and a 32-bit. After listening to the features required in my product – keyless entry and ignition for the car, remote control of the garage door, monitoring the amounts of milk in the fridge, and telling the time – the CAST guys said an 8-bit core would provide sufficient horsepower for the sensing, calculation and control features I described, even in the face of the mixed-signal, ADC demands of the product.
They also noted that the 8051 is by far CAST’s most popular core and useful to people working on Internet-of-Things ideas, particularly if WiFi features are not needed. With WiFi, a 32-bit processor probably makes better sense.
I asked about a price point for the core I would use. From research I’ve been doing in anticipation of my Dick Tracy design, I know that prices for IP cores are usually as closely guarded as Edward Snowden’s forwarding address. Hal Barbour said that CAST has always been pretty open about that: “Depending on the configuration, our 8-bit core will cost you somewhere between $30, 000 and $50,000.”
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Tags: CAST, Hal Barbour, Nikos Zervas, Paul Lindemann
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Thursday, October 17th, 2013
A brief sampler of recent announcements on the IP front reveal distinct themes in the marketplace. IP development and integration require a viable ecosystem of suppliers and tool vendors; automotive, audio and mobile apps continue to be important targets for IP developers whose customers seek better safety, longer battery life, and truer sound (particularly for sporting events and concerts of aging rockers); IP interfaces remain crucial; and platform-based design totally depends on further enhancements in IP technologies.
Additionally, acquisitions definitely pan out for the companies smart enough to snap up the good ones: Synopsys/ARC, Cadence/Tensilica, and Imagination/MIPS.
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Tags: Altera, ARC, ARM, ASSET InterTech, Cadence, CAST, Dolby, Freescale Semiconductor, Geir Skaaden, Geoff Lees, Imagination Technologies, IPextreme, Jack Guedj, John Couling, John Koeter, Martin Lund, Mentor Graphics, MIPS, Nikos Zervas, Pete Hutton, Suk Lee, Synopsys, Tensilica, Tom Halfhill, Tony King-Smith, TSMC, Warren Savage, Xilinx
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Thursday, June 20th, 2013
Despite their marked contributions to DAC in Austin, the folks in the IP world have not been resting on their laurels, but have continued to generate developments of both a technical and business nature.
** Synopsys and OCZ Technology Group announced OCZ “achieved first-pass silicon success” in its newest NAND flash Vector SSD using Synopsys’ DesignWare DDR2/3-Lite PHY, Embedded Memories, STAR Memory System, and Professional Services.
The companies say the OCZ Vector SSD was designed “to deliver superior sustained performance through its new, high-performance Indilinx Barefoot 3 flash controller supporting the SATA-3 protocol. Synopsys’ design consultants worked closely with OCZ’s engineers throughout the implementation of their chip, delivering expertise and advanced methodologies in IP integration, physical design, and physical verification that enabled OCZ to complete their implementation in less than six months.”
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Tags: Andes Technology, Arasan, ARM, BDA, Beyond Semiconductor, Cadence Design Systems, CAST, Cavium, eMemory Technology, Evatronix, GDA Technologies, Imagination Technologies, MIPS, Mixel, NVIDIA, OCZ Technology Group, Synopsys
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Thursday, May 30th, 2013
** IPextreme announced it will collaborate with its Constellations program members and other key players in the semiconductor IP ecosystem to host the Stars of IP Party on June 4th, an event coinciding with DAC 2013 in Austin, Texas. The company says Stars of IP celebrates “all things semiconductor IP” and seeks to build relationships among IP provider companies and customers, thereby strengthening the ecosystem. Co-hosting with IPextreme are Atrenta, CAST, Certus Semiconductor, Recore Systems, Sonics, Synopsys, and True Circuits.
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Tags: Alma Technologies, ARM, Atrenta, Brett Cline, Cadence Design Systems, CAST, Certus Semiconductor, Charlie Cheng, CircuitSutra, Constellations, Cosmic Circuits, DAC 2013, Forte Design Systems, Grant Pierce, IPextreme, Kilopass Technology, Martin Lund, Michael Mo, Recore Systems, S.C. Chien, Sonics, Synopsys, True Circuits, UMC, Umesh Sisodia
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Wednesday, January 30th, 2013
DesignCon’s unfolding in Silicon Valley all week. Among the many companies exhibiting there, IP provider CAST and its IP core development partner Beyond Semiconductor are enjoying a particularly excellent experience. When I stopped in at CAST’s booth on the DesignCon floor for a brief chat with company CEO Hal Barbour this afternoon, he told me his company’s revenue numbers for January 2013 alone are set to outpace CAST’s total first-quarter revenues from 2010, 2011, or 2012.
Given the energy and attendance swirling about us at DesignCon, Barbour’s impressive financials were not a complete surprise – Silicon Valley is back – but a revitalized revenue stream is not the only reason CAST is enjoying a lot of traffic in their booth this week. More it’s because CAST and Beyond Semiconductor have chosen this time and place to announce yet another member of their family of 32-bit processor cores targeting embedded applications.
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Tags: BA22, BA25, Beyond Semiconductor, CAST, DesignCon, Hal Barbour
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