Breakfast Bytes

The History of CMOS...and the History of Cadence and imec

Paul McLellan — Wed, 17 May 2023 08:00:00 GMT

Today, in Antwerp, Belgium, Anirudh Devgan, the CEO of Cadence, is presenting at ITF World. ITF is the imec technology forum, taking place annually for years. One year during my tenure at Semiwiki, imec invited me to attend and even paid my travel ex...(read more)

TSMC Technology Roadmap, 2023 Version

Paul McLellan — Mon, 08 May 2023 12:00:00 GMT

April brings one of the two times during the year that TSMC lays out its process roadmap, fab construction plans, and more at the TSMC Technology Symposium. The other is the Open Innovation Platform Ecosystem Forum in October, usually just refer...(read more)

What Is Zonal Architecture? And Why Is it Upending the Automotive Supply Chain?

Paul McLellan — Fri, 05 May 2023 12:00:00 GMT

Earlier this week I wrote about the electric vehicle (EV) transition, how it is happening faster than many companies are prepared for, and the implications for the massive amount of change that the automotive companies have to accomplish (see my pos...(read more)

The Automotive Electric Vehicle Transition

Paul McLellan — Mon, 01 May 2023 12:00:00 GMT

The only really interesting part of the automotive industry is the electric vehicle (EV) segment. These vehicles are also called NEVs in China for "new energy vehicles". The reason that I say this is the only interesting segment is because it is clea...(read more)

Richard Goering, 1952-2023

Paul McLellan — Thu, 27 Apr 2023 12:00:00 GMT

I have some sad news to report. Richard Goering passed away last month at the age of 71. For many years, during the heyday of EE Times, Richard was the chief journalist covering EDA. As a marketing guy in EDA at various times, I interacted with Richa...(read more)

CadenceLIVE Silicon Valley 2023

Paul McLellan — Mon, 24 Apr 2023 12:00:00 GMT

Last week was CadenceLIVE Silicon Valley, held at the Santa Clara Convention Center, and took place, as usual, over two days. It was very well attended and everywhere seemed fairly crowded. The structure of CadenceLIVE was that the first morning was ...(read more)

4nm 112G-ELR SerDes PHY IP

Paul McLellan — Thu, 13 Apr 2023 12:00:00 GMT

That's a lot of buzzwords! I assume you already know that SerDes stands for serializer-deserializer. It is an IP block that takes parallel data from buses on the chip and transforms it into a very high-frequency serial signal. In this case, the s...(read more)

The 50th Anniversary of Picasso's Death

Paul McLellan — Sat, 08 Apr 2023 12:00:00 GMT

Today, 8th April 2023, is the 50th anniversary of the death of Picasso. He died on 8th April 1973 at the age of 91 in Mougins, France. Mougins is a famous village in the south of France, not far from Cadence's office in Sophia Antipolis. It is famous...(read more)

IEDM: Backside Power Delivery

Paul McLellan — Fri, 10 Feb 2023 13:00:00 GMT

One part of the short course that I attended at IEDM in December was about backside power delivery networks. It was presented by Gaspard Hiblot of imec and titled Process Architectures Changes to Improve Power Delivery. The presentation is co-credite...(read more)

DesignCon: Boston Dynamics' Keynote...Plus Spot

Paul McLellan — Thu, 09 Feb 2023 13:00:00 GMT

I wrote about Ben Gu's keynote from DesignCon earlier this week in my post DesignCon: Ben Gu's Keynote. Today it is the turn of Devin Billings of Boston Dynamics. Devin's keynote was titled Enabling Autonomous Robotic Capability. He admi...(read more)

How to Make Chiplets a Viable Market

Paul McLellan — Wed, 08 Feb 2023 13:00:00 GMT

At the recent Chiplet Summit, there was a panel session on the last afternoon titled How to Make Chiplets a Viable Market. The panel was moderated by Meta's Ravi Agarwal, and the panelists were (from left to right in the photo): Travis Lanier of...(read more)

DesignCon: Ben Gu's Keynote

Paul McLellan — Tue, 07 Feb 2023 13:00:00 GMT

There were two keynotes during DesignCon, one by Ben Gu, Cadence's VP of the System Analysis business, and the other by Devin Billings of Boston Dynamics, which I will cover later this week. There was actually a third, on the tutorial day before...(read more)

DATE 2023 in Antwerp Preview

Paul McLellan — Mon, 06 Feb 2023 13:00:00 GMT

Design and Test Europe (DATE) is coming up in April. It will be in person and it will be in Antwerp. It will take place on 17th to 19th April in the Flanders Meeting and Convention Centre Antwerp (FMCCA). The detailed program is now available. A word...(read more)

Sunday Brunch Video for 5th February 2023

Paul McLellan — Sun, 05 Feb 2023 08:01:00 GMT

https://youtu.be/BgbCT-QcNBo Made at DesignCon (camera Steve Brown) Monday: The Chiplet Summit Tuesday: Scaling to One Million Cores on AWS Wednesday: Where Is My Flying Car? Thursday: Design in a System Context Friday: Chiplet Summit:...(read more)

Chiplet Summit: Challenges of Chiplet-Based Designs

Paul McLellan — Fri, 03 Feb 2023 13:00:00 GMT

I wrote the first post, The Chiplet Summit, from the recent Chiplet Summit in San Jose, If you have not seen that, you should probably read it first. A leitmotiv of the conference was: Moore's Law is dead. All we have left is packaging. As I sa...(read more)