Posts Tagged ‘MIPS’
Thursday, November 30th, 2017
San Jose-based Sonics is a long-established IP vendor specializing in On-chip Networks [NoC] and Energy Processing Units [EPU]. Co-founded by CEO Grant Pierce and CTO Drew Wingard, the company has 150 parents and has “supported customer products that have shipped more than 4 billion SoCs.”
Currently Grant Pierce is an exceptionally busy man. Not only is he leading Sonics, he’s also serving as Chair of the ESD Alliance. It’s a fortunate circumstance to have Pierce leading the Alliance; his point of view is exactly what’s needed to help shape what was originally an EDA-focused organization into something that embraces the full set of constituencies driving electronic system design today. Pierce is strongly committed to new technologies and the small companies that drive the innovation.
Pierce and I spoke by phone in late November. He is clearly very enthused about the company and the ESD Alliance.
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Tags: Aart de Geus, ARM, Design Automation Conference, Drew Wingard, EPU, Gary Smith, Grant Pierce, IoT, Joe Costello, MIPS, Moortec, NoC, Reuse 2017, Robin Saxby, SoftBank, Sonics, Tallwood
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Thursday, June 15th, 2017
UltraSoC is on a roll, having just wrapped up an energetic participation in the last month’s RISC-V conference in Shanghai, where UltraSoC CTO Gadge Panesar was a speaker. Additionally, the company is announcing “new funding, new investors, and new board members” – including UC Berkeley’s Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli.
When I spoke this week with company CEO Rupert Baines, he started with Shanghai: “There is so much interest in RISC-V in China. The attendance there [exceeded] the headcount at the previous meetings at Google and MIT, although the numbers may be confusing as there were so many students at the Shanghai event.”
Asked if the RISC-V event would be in China again, Baines said, “I believe going forward there will be one conference in the U.S. each year, probably in Silicon Valley, and one international. Nvidia sponsored the latest one through their presence in Shanghai.”
Turning to UltraSoC, I asked about the company’s origin, market and competition.
Baines said, “We do semiconductor IP that solves a problem. The chips are so big and complicated today, understanding how they work – with lots of processors and lots of software interacting with each other and the real world – is incredibly difficult.
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Tags: Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli, ARM, ARM TechCon, CEVA, Design Automation Conference 2017, Gadge Panesar, HiSilicon, Imagination, Microsemi, MIPS, Movidius, RISC-V, Rupert Baines, Tensilica, UltraSoC
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Thursday, May 18th, 2017
Here begins the first of four dialogs about Grand Challenges in IP. This first installment is a conversation with Sonics co-Founder and CEO Grant Pierce, who also currently serves as Chair of the ESD Alliance. We spoke by phone earlier this week.
Asked to enumerate the Grand Challenges in IP he sees today, Pierce began: “Having been in the industry for 20 years myself, I am surprised that we still have some challenges ahead of us. We have new entrants into the industry that are more focused at the system level, however, with customers coming in to interact with the IP guys directly to get their custom designs done.
“What I am seeing today, versus 20 years ago, is the emergence of Machine Learning. And that brings with it some technical challenges. On the one hand, they are very familiar – the age-old challenges about bandwidth and throughput – but on the other hand, they are also very new. Today’s applications are driving things together in a totally new way.
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Tags: ARM, ESD Alliance, Grant Pierce, Intel, Machine Learning, Miles Davis, MIPS, NVIDIA, RISC architecture, Sonics
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Thursday, May 4th, 2017
It’s not been pretty of late in the world of IP. Imagination’s valuation tanked when it was revealed in early April that the company might be losing Apple as a customer. Imagination says it’s going to fight this development, but a different ending to the story of David and Goliath comes to mind in that declaration.
Then this week, that same Imagination announced it was selling MIPS – a company it bought back in 2012 with great fanfare for [a mere] $60 million. [It’s true, MIPS’ patent portfolio was worth a lot more.]
Also this week, TSMC announced it is charging a former employee with IP theft: The former employee is alleged to have stolen manufacturing data from TSMC specifically related to Nvidia and AMD chip production, taken it across the Straights of Taiwan, and turned it over to his new employer in the PRC, HLMC.
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Tags: AMD, Apple, HLMC, Imagination, MIPS, NVIDIA, TSMC
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Wednesday, January 27th, 2016
The book that Sir Robin Saxby has been waiting for has finally been written: “Mobile Unleashed: The Origin and Evolution of ARM Processors in Our Devices”.
Authored by SemiWiki’s Dan Nenni and Don Dingee, the book “delivers an informative look at events and technology that powered the mobile device industry to worldwide adoption.”
When I spoke with Dingee by phone this week, he said the book represents an enormous amount of work: “Sixteen months of intense research, 270 pages and over 800 footnotes.”
Other books have been written about ARM, he acknowledged, but this one is different: “People ask if this is a technology book or the story of ARM and I say, in truth it’s a little bit of both.”
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Tags: ARM, Dan Nenni, Don Dingee, Google, Huawei, Intel, MediaTek, Mentor Graphics, Microsoft, MIPS, Motorola, Nokia, Qualcomm, Sir Robin Saxby, TI, Wally Rhines
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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, November 29th, 2012
In a move to catch up with industry coverage of CEVA’s unsolicited offer to buy MIPS Technologies, I turned to Yahoo Financials to find out what was going on. What I quickly discovered in looking at Yahoo was that the CEVA/MIPS story has gotten ugly.
I’m among many who have been interested in MIPS over the years for several reasons: a) MIPS used to be on the EDAC Board of Directors in the person of then-MIPS President & CEO John Bourgoin, and b) MIPS was founded by Stanford President John Hennessy.
Now, however, per the Press Release posted on November 28th: “Levi & Korsinsky is investigating the Board of Directors of MIPS Technologies, Inc. for possible breaches of fiduciary duty and other violations of state law in connection with the sale of the Company to Imagination Technologies Group PLC and the sale of the Company’s patents to Allied Security Trust (“AST”).
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Tags: Allied Security Trust, AST, CEVA, EDAC, Imagination Technologies Grouop, John Bourgoin, John Hennessy, Levi & Korsinsky, Lifshitz Law Firm, MIPS
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Thursday, August 30th, 2012
Hal Barbour is President of CAST, an IP company based on the East Coast. Hal has a tremendous ability to explain the many facets of the industry, and it was a great pleasure to sit down and talk with him this week. When we spoke by phone on August 29th, he had just wrapped up an earlier call with a customer.
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Hal Barbour on All things IP …
Q: How do you make yourself known to customers?
 Hal Barbour: We have always put a lot of information in the hands of our customers, but the delivery mechanism today is quite a bit different. We’ve learned to leverage most of the contemporary tools – blogs, online meetings, webinars, shows and press releases. Press releases are just as important as ever, but where we used to send them to a central distribution center and a group of editors, now there are about 15 or 20 various people and outlets who disseminate the information to a much larger population.
Q: And how do working engineers hear about the products?
Hal Barbour: That’s the really interesting thing. Engineers today can easily see press releases directly, plus they have at their disposal a powerful set of search tools to help them get the information they need, so whatever information you’re putting out there, it better be right and it better be credible. If it’s not, engineers have got plenty of other sources to turn to.
And if you’re going to be out there, you better be able to respond to inquiries quickly and rapidly. Ultimately, however, it’s your name and your reputation that sells products. I can’t tell you the number of people who contact us based on our name and reputation.
Q: Isn’t that called ‘word of mouth’?
Hal Barbour: That’s exactly what it is, only it’s even faster today. Spreading the word used to be limited by who you knew, but today with social media and blogs, word of mouth moves at lighting speed and is more important than ever. Even today, though, nothing substitutes for face-to-face contact with the customer.
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Tags: 8051, Alma Technologies, ARM, BA22, Beyond Semiconductor, Cadence, CAST, Constellations, Denali, Evatronix, Fraunhofer, GSA IP Working Group, Hal Barbour, IPextreme, MIPS, Synopsys, Tensilica
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Thursday, August 23rd, 2012
Behind Warren Savage’s calm and courteous demeanor beats the heart of a revolutionary: A guy who not only talks the talk, but walks the walk of growing his beloved IP industry through the most radical of ideas – cooperation.
 Warren is the founder and CEO of IPextreme, a Silicon-Valley based company helping other companies commercialize their IP, small nuggets of pure gold that would otherwise enjoy only internal use. With the assist of Warren & Co, that gold is beefed up, intensely documented, and then licensed to users outside the firewall who then have access to robust 3rd-party design blocks, yielding revenue back to the IP developers they would not otherwise enjoy.
So that’s Warren’s business, but what’s really impressive about Warren is the other half of his professional involvement: working through the GSA [Global Semiconductor Alliance] to enhance the well-being of all players in the IP industry, not just his customers. Warren chairs GSA’s Working Group on IP, and leads the Leadership Group subset within that Working Group.
Warren also founded and continues to lead Constellations, a consortium-like group of IP vendors who meet regularly to discuss business issues, develop joint solutions, and host invitation-only events for their customers. The next Constellations event is coming up in early October.
Clearly, Warren Savage is a revolutionary, someone who believes a rising tide raises all boats in the IP industry and acts vigorously on that belief. Warren and I spoke by phone on August 22nd.
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Tags: 3rd-party IP, ARM, ColdFire, Compact JTAG, Constellations, DAC, EDAC, Freescale, Global Semiconductor Alliance, GSA, GSA IP Working Group, Infineon, Intel, IPextreme, MIPS, PowerPC, Reuse Methodology Manual, Silicon IP, Synopsys, VSIA, Warren Savage
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