Trends in VLSI Ecosystem

tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-105685902024-08-28T12:59:15.129+08:00Trends in VLSI EcosystemRuminations on trends in the microelectronics arenaMeenu Sarinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08877235505809649015noreply@blogger.comBlogger85125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10568590.post-84125806748616197912007-06-05T16:13:00.000+08:002007-06-05T16:17:27.836+08:00Moving to another site....

Hi folks, I'm moving this blog to another server. You can access this blog now at www.asic-vlsi.com/blog. See you there!

Meenu Sarinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08877235505809649015noreply@blogger.com79tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10568590.post-66043484792257502212007-05-24T21:57:00.000+08:002007-05-24T21:59:50.982+08:00Common Platform Agreement extended to 32nm

IBM and its Common Platform agreement partners will extend their development relationship to 32nm too.The group started with 2 partners – IBM and Chartered. This later included Infineon, Samsung, and now Freescale. In addition, with the collapse of Crolles Alliance, it can also draw more partners.While collaboration is a necessity in these process nodes and the Common Platform Agreement has been

Meenu Sarinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08877235505809649015noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10568590.post-1479172822405636662007-05-24T21:50:00.000+08:002007-05-24T21:56:35.723+08:00TSMC catches up with Intel on 45nm production

So, a foundry has closed the gap with an IDM!In all likelihoods, TSMC will be in volume production for 45nm at the same time as Intel – in first half of 2008. As noted by David Manners in an an earlier post, “With all this third party expertise soaking up the industry’s value-add, where is there to go for the IDMs?”

Meenu Sarinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08877235505809649015noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10568590.post-19652787533243362832007-05-22T16:59:00.000+08:002007-05-22T17:03:51.838+08:00TSMC makes IP but denies it is in IP business

Call it as seismic changes or consolidation, the chip manufacturing world is going through some upheaval. While on one end, quite a few IDMs are transitioning to a fab lite strategy (albeit in different flavours) - especially with the high costs & risks involved in sub 65nm, on the other end heavyweights like TSMC are spreading their reach into the IP arena too.As I noted in an earlier post, TSMC

Meenu Sarinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08877235505809649015noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10568590.post-36317230146969451582007-05-21T21:23:00.000+08:002007-05-21T21:26:30.259+08:00STATS ChipPAC shareholders resist private equity buyout

In the recent spate of takeovers by the private equity world and at a time when the chip industry is undergoing consolidation, a blip has occurred – Temasek Holdings’ wholly owned subsidiary, Singapore Technologies Semiconductors Pte Ltd. (STSPL) has failed to complete its attempted buyout of test and assembly provider STATS ChipPAC Ltd. STSPL now has a majority stake of 83.1 percent in the

Meenu Sarinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08877235505809649015noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10568590.post-64711406415638302032007-05-18T14:03:00.000+08:002007-05-18T14:07:32.976+08:00Low power IC design kit enables representative design

Cadence is slated to release its Low Power Methodology Kit in late June. The highlight of the kit is a wireless "representative design" implemented using multi-supply voltage and power shutoff methods. It comes with all the necessary command scripts and technology files to complete the design. The design has sample IP including a processor and bus fabric from ARM, Wi-Fi from Wipro, USB 2.0 from

Meenu Sarinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08877235505809649015noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10568590.post-60931881669460517092007-05-14T17:22:00.000+08:002007-05-14T17:25:39.605+08:00Renesas seeks to keep its own process technology

Renesas seems to be bucking the trend of IDMs relying more and more on foundries for advanced process technology development.Renesas believes in working (on its own or in collaboration) on advanced process development. With plans to increase sales in system-on-chip solutions and microcontrollers, it may make sense to keep the advanced process development in-house in order to have more control and

Meenu Sarinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08877235505809649015noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10568590.post-8719579150161676332007-05-12T14:53:00.000+08:002007-05-12T14:58:14.522+08:00TI takes two approaches to IC manufacturing

Mark LaPedus reports in his article in EETimes about TI’s approach towards IC manufacturing – while bolstering its in-house effort in analog production, TI is shifting more of its logic based work & process flow to foundries.TI is adopting a 3 pronged approach based on its product categories - At the 65-nm node, TI has three foundry partners for its wireless chips: Chartered, TSMC and UMC. For

Meenu Sarinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08877235505809649015noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10568590.post-77954385148490164912007-05-10T13:38:00.000+08:002007-05-10T13:40:28.717+08:00LSI Corp. may exit Consumer Electronics Biz

According to a news report, LSI Corp. is considering whether or not to continue its Consumer Electronics (CE) business. It was however clarified that this would not impact the company’s focus on its chips for mobile phones.This comes closely on the heels of the revelation by LSI Corp. that it repurchased 5 million shares, worth $43 million, of its common stock in the past couple of days following

Meenu Sarinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08877235505809649015noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10568590.post-66998936903436809512007-05-08T12:07:00.000+08:002007-05-08T12:09:34.810+08:00Singapore's 5M$ wafer fab training program funding

The Economic Development Board (EDB) has recently announced that it will invest over $5 million over the next three years into a program, Wafer Fabrication Specialist Manpower Program, designed to groom more wafer fabrication experts at local universities; aim is 300 new engineers to meet the chip industry demand.The funds jointly contributed by the government and industry, would be used to

Meenu Sarinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08877235505809649015noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10568590.post-25219815429422638682007-05-07T14:43:00.000+08:002007-05-07T14:44:28.249+08:00A bug.....

Read some interesting trivia in a book, “The Silicon Boys” by David A. Kaplan on origin of “bug” i.e. a computer bug....The University of Pennsylvania’s ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) in 1946 was the first attempt at a large scale digital computer. It was a huge thing and had 18000 vacuum tubes. The warmth & light of ENIAC’s tubes presented a problem – moths liked them

Meenu Sarinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08877235505809649015noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10568590.post-19047521419269684642007-05-03T18:04:00.000+08:002007-05-03T18:07:12.152+08:00Convergence outcome unclear but opportunity rich

I read an interesting article on the recent iSuppli European Briefing series held in Hungary and reported by Drew Wilson in Electronic Business.While iSupply sees consumers with 2 main devices: one handset for communications & information and the other one for entertainment with internet, gaming, music & video, Nokia forecasts the merging of all useful functions into one gadget. Its senior

Meenu Sarinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08877235505809649015noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10568590.post-75122519869065287142007-04-25T19:50:00.000+08:002007-04-25T19:55:17.462+08:00ESL tool targets algorithm for FPGA, ASIC devices

Synplicity rolled out its Synplify DSP ASIC Edition software at the Design Automation and Test Europe conference in France. Their earlier ESL synthesis tool was aimed at FPGA designs. With this new offering, they are targeting customers who use FPGA prototyping for their DSP based ASICs.Another recent news has been that TSMC is broadening its IP portfolio giving worries to IP providers and

Meenu Sarinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08877235505809649015noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10568590.post-83541073335938795312007-04-25T11:44:00.000+08:002007-04-25T12:00:50.816+08:00TSMC's IP moves stir up concern among providers

TSMC is broadening it’s portfolio of internally developed IPs and 3rd party IPs. It had started a program called IP-9000, later renamed to Active Accuracy Assurance Program, to qualify various IPs in its foundries. The objective was to expedite the design time with silicon proven 3rd party IPs.With shorter design cycle time and with IPs becoming mandatory blocks in a design, the need for silicon

Meenu Sarinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08877235505809649015noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10568590.post-36718706523236167742007-04-23T20:45:00.000+08:002007-04-23T20:48:22.287+08:00UMC joins CPF standard alliance

UMC is the latest one to join the Cadence camp. Earlier this month, Cadence and TSMC had announced the availability of 65nm libraries from TSMC supporting CPF (Common Power Format).The market forces will decide who the winner is; but the poor user has to cope with this standards battle in the interim.

Meenu Sarinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08877235505809649015noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10568590.post-82228570755817745382007-04-09T23:04:00.000+08:002007-04-09T23:13:50.670+08:00Medical field may push India's IC industry

TI’s CEO & President, Rich Templeton, mentioned the importance of medical equipment biz for India’s semiconductor industry during his visit to India.Applications in the medical area, along with automotive applications hold prominence in the near future for the semiconductor industry in general, albeit a lot more in emerging markets like India and China. While consumer and telecom applications

Meenu Sarinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08877235505809649015noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10568590.post-73787141570748454632007-03-31T19:24:00.000+08:002007-03-31T19:27:40.274+08:00The dilemma of two languages in low power design

So, hopes of a single power format seem remote and it is increasingly likely that the industry will need to support both standards i.e. CPF as well as UPF. Well, now the market forces will decide the winner……

Meenu Sarinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08877235505809649015noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10568590.post-81830719754587375232007-03-31T13:54:00.000+08:002007-03-31T13:57:32.831+08:00HSMC to chip in 4 bn$ for Indian fabs

I had reported in an earlier post “India outlines long awaited IC policy”, that the Indian govt.’s announcement of Special Incentives Package Scheme is likely to be followed by announcements by potential investors.While SemIndia had already proposed investment in partnership with AMD, the latest one is from Hindustan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (HSMC), a Silicon Valley-based

Meenu Sarinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08877235505809649015noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10568590.post-49835753007205022462007-03-20T20:06:00.000+08:002007-03-20T20:09:17.599+08:00India's semiconductor policy - the ongoing debate

Read this article (Nadamuni says, in EE Times) ; Wanted to submit my comments there but looks like a perpetual error while submitting comments.....2 issues which could be of concern to the fledgling Indian semiconductor market are: potential overcapacity situation and offering an attractive pricing strategy in face of strong competition from established regional foundries.Investing with new

Meenu Sarinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08877235505809649015noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10568590.post-3358322566926965832007-03-19T11:12:00.000+08:002007-03-19T11:14:43.336+08:00UMC to open support office in India

UMC has announced that it plans to open a support office in Hyderabad, India. The main charter is to support India based customers. This is close on heels with TSMC’s setting up office in Bangalore, India.

Meenu Sarinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08877235505809649015noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10568590.post-60691585800225264112007-03-12T17:48:00.000+08:002007-03-12T17:50:00.627+08:00Are ASICs dead?

There were some very interesting insights from the commentary on the panel discussion on the above topic.People have been long talking about the demise of ASICs….and these are still around. A good starting point taken, hence, was the definition of ASICs itself. ASICs have undergone a transformation over the years and have evolved much from the traditional cell based ASICs.Some interesting

Meenu Sarinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08877235505809649015noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10568590.post-40794664306524945192007-03-09T17:34:00.000+08:002007-03-09T17:37:05.590+08:00Cisco, IBM team up on open standards communication platform

Cisco and IBM are planning to develop a platform based on open standards to allow unified communications and collaborations in their applications. IBM will offer a set of application programming interfaces (APIs) as a subset of its Lotus Sametime collaboration software and Cisco will offer communication APIs for accessing voice and video services.Cisco and IBM also will roll out "specific client

Meenu Sarinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08877235505809649015noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10568590.post-71230874101710196152007-03-06T22:37:00.000+08:002007-03-06T22:58:14.260+08:00Integrated DFM solutions still lacking

Walter Ng, senior director of platform alliances at Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing noted in his presentation at the SPIE Advanced Lithography Conference last week that while there are some good point tools for DFM, integrated DFM solutions are still lacking.As I noted in an earlier post, Why can’t we do it in EDA?, it is a huge task for a single vendor to handle even most of the important

Meenu Sarinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08877235505809649015noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10568590.post-31614565581490215102007-02-27T15:52:00.000+08:002007-02-27T15:55:11.597+08:00India outlines long awaited IC policy

After several hiccups, India has announced its IC policy.Dubbed the Special Incentive Package Scheme, the initiative is focused on attracting investments for setting up semiconductor plants and other technology manufacturing industries. Semiconductor companies seeking incentives—which will be 20 percent of the capital expenditure during the first 10 years—will have to invest a minimum $550

Meenu Sarinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08877235505809649015noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10568590.post-51182647805698854922007-02-23T19:13:00.000+08:002007-02-23T19:17:15.016+08:00Blaze DFM merges with Aprio

So, the DFM consolidation has begun…..While acquisitions of DFM companies by EDA vendors was already there, this is the first merger between 2 DFM companies. Blaze’s parametric DFM expertise complements Aprio’s lithography analysis skill-set. Together they can synergize on DFM analysis as well as optimization and address both manufacturing as well as the designer sets.I had pointed out in an

Meenu Sarinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08877235505809649015noreply@blogger.com0