John's Semi-Blog

The Evolution of Conference Schwag

2012-01-20T16:28:00.000-08:00

I noticed a lonely unused USB drive in my desk today, and it got me thinking about the hoops that we engineers will jump through to get a conference giveaway. It's an arms race!

In the beginning, there was the t-shirt ...

I just took a box full of bags and backpacks to the donation station ...

USB drives were once precious ...

An iPod is still a pretty cool gift ...

But today's holy grail is the iPad.

Note, none of the pictures are of my schwag. I grabbed photos available under Creative Commons license.

Synopsys/ Magma - Gary Smith's take

2012-01-12T14:47:00.000-08:00

Gary Smith gives his informed perspective on Synopsys/ Magma - Great Acquisition, Difficult Merger :: Gary Smith EDA. I like that he names names with respect to which Synopsys products aren't cutting it. On paper, it seemed like a great deal of overlap between the two companies. But Gary argues that Synopsys wasn't competitive in several of these areas, and the Magma tools will give them a stronger line-up.

This point is hard to argue with:

The static timing analyzer will be a big issue with the customer base. With their recent acquisition of Extreme DA, and now Magma, Synopsys has regained their Franchise position in the important Static Timing market. This is not a good thing for the design engineer. Only competition drives tool improvements.

But how's this for bravado?

Magma brags that they can achieve better results with a five man team than Synopsys can with a fifty man team.

That's the sort of claim I might believe from an EDA startup; could a public company (no longer a spring chicken) be so agile, or is this coming from the supreme confidence of their CEO?

The Engadget Interview: ARM co-founder John Biggs

2012-01-03T17:18:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year and welcome to 2012! The Engadget Interview: ARM co-founder John Biggs -- Engadget covers the interesting history, philosophy, and future of ARM Holdings. As you will learn from the article, it's a company that might never have been started were it not for Intel.

Unix's Long Strange Trip

2011-12-02T16:06:00.000-08:00

If you love computers and history as much as I do, you'll enjoy The Strange Birth and Long Life of Unix - IEEE Spectrum.

Such a wisely designed system to be pervasive after 40 years!

Snapdragon Buggy?

2011-11-19T09:10:00.000-08:00

3D ICs Have a History

2011-11-10T15:37:00.000-08:00

Steve’s Improbable History of 3D ICs? Six decades of 3D electronic packaging | EDA360 Insider is a great quick history (with pictures!) of 3-dimensional chips (actually, going back to the vacuum tube days).

Practical takeaway: stacked memory is clearly one of the killer apps for 21st-century 3D IC assembly.

SNUG Silicon Valley 2012 CFP

2011-11-03T17:17:00.000-07:00

The Call for Papers is OPEN for SNUG Silicon Valley!

If you're a Synopsys tool user, please consider submitting a paper today for presentation at SNUG Silicon Valley. You can propose a paper by filling out a form and writing an abstract. Besides benefiting the engineering community at large, you'll develop your professional skills and raise your profile. We on the Tech Committee will help you!

Please visit the Call for Papers Web Page to check it out and submit your idea.

Career Fodder

2011-11-02T13:12:00.000-07:00

I'm thinking to write a post on immigration and careers, but for now let me point you to two provocative articles I recently read:

Steve Jobs's Advice for Obama. While I love the acronym: the Staple Act (Stopping Trained in America Ph.D.s from Leaving the Economy), the article also claims that Steve Jobs told Mr. Obama that Apple employs 700,000 factory workers in China because it can't find the 30,000 engineers in the U.S. that it needs on site at its plants. "If you could educate these engineers," he said at the dinner, "we could move more manufacturing jobs here." Quite a claim!
Non-engineer-staffed IEEE-USA sells out US electrical engineering jobs, a forum post on SemiWiki.com, sparks an excellent debate about US engineering grad schools, H1B and "green cards", and career prospects for American engineers (and their children).

Dilbert Channels Apple

2011-09-16T08:15:00.000-07:00

Dilbert is poking fun at Apple Store training! Will this be the start of a series?

How does it apply to our world? "As it turns out, you can't get your data out of our EDA tool ..."

Twitter Primer

2011-09-14T14:00:00.000-07:00

For several years, Synopsys has a group of folks participating in social media (blogging, tweeting, etc.). Why, they've even written a book about it!

If you've heard about Twitter but don't know what it's all about, here's their article to succinctly show you the answers: The Listening Post » Twitter Helps Engineers.

What tweets might you find related to EDA on Twitter? Here's a real-time display:

Architecting for Asynchronous Designs

2011-09-06T13:22:00.000-07:00

I've long been fascinated by asynchronous logic design (filed under "magic they don't teach you in school"). And a startup called Fulcrum was one of the more successful at commercializing designs based on these tecniques. Recently, Intel acquired Fulcrum. Here, Ron Wilson shares some insights into what applications the asynchronous style excels at, and how to compose the solution play into its strengths: What is Fulcrum's real leverage?.

Steve Jobs' Partner in Design

2011-09-02T17:27:00.000-07:00

Tech news has had a plethora of stories about Steve Jobs and Apple since Dear Leader announced he was stepping down as CEO.

The SF Chronicle has a nice profile of one of the less publicized but vitally important talents at Apple, the head of product design: Apple's product vision falls to Jonathan Ive.

Update: Perhaps the San Jose Mercury News follows my blog, because shortly after this post, the newspaper of Silicon Valley came out with their own profile of Mr. Ive, Apple's design wizard has not left the building - San Jose Mercury News.

Steve Jobs’s Best Quotes

2011-08-24T21:16:00.000-07:00

In honor of Steve Jobs on the day of his resignation as Apple CEO: Steve Jobs’s Best Quotes - Digits - WSJ. I'm most inspired by the things he has to say about design, and life. And most amused by what he says about Microsoft.

CAD Engineers' Bookshelf Updated

2011-07-28T18:36:00.000-07:00

Four years ago, I presented my original CAD Engineers' Bookshelf. I've put together an updated list here of the subset of books that I refer to most often. Since some titles have been updated, latest editions are listed here.

Another update since 2007 is that alternative formats are widely available for these books. You can go directly to the source at O'Reilly Media and purchase Ebooks formatted for all the popular e-readers. It's very convenient to be able to download formats that look great on your Computer, Kindle, or iPad.

Without further ado, here's the 2011 version of the bookshelf. It's all Perl, which is testimony to both Perl's power and it's inscrutability!

When Trolls Attack

2011-07-25T21:38:00.001-07:00

Ever listen to This American Life? Ira Glass is a great story teller. This week's episode is very relevant to our industry.

It's on the long side. You can listen to it here, or do as I do and load it as a podcast onto your personal media player of choice. Then you can listen while washing the dishes, walking the dog, etc. Multi-tasking!

Who's your (least) favorite EDA/IP patent troll?

Art of Failure 2011

2011-07-19T20:35:00.000-07:00

Enjoy the hauntingly beautiful chip photographs in Art of Failure 2011 - IEEE Spectrum.

Saluting the Father of our Foundry

2011-05-17T16:58:00.000-07:00

A well-deserved congratulations to Dr. Morris Chang, recipient of the 2011 IEEE Medal of Honor. IEEE Spectrum magazine has published a fascinating profile of his professional life in Morris Chang: Foundry Father - IEEE Spectrum.

The article quotes numerous industry luminaries to frame his impact. It's hard to overstate what Dr. Chang's accomplishments have done for so many of the industries that we work in: fabless semiconductor, EDA, ASIC, ... I found the article to be full of fascinating tidbits, such as

His first job paid $480 per month.
At the beginning, he was a self-taught semiconductor engineer. He spent countless hours after work to learn about new fields.
He was a highly successful TI executive before "starting over" to create a new industry from scratch in Taiwan.
On several occasions, he left good companies when things weren't working out, with no immediate job prospects. He had the confidence that he'd find a good opportunity.
Dr. Chang didn't become fabulously wealthy from founding TSMC! He's well-off, for sure, but a US executive would have made sure to ensure his success first.

Insanely Great or Just Insane?

2011-05-10T13:35:00.001-07:00

A fascinating inside look at Apple and Steve Jobs' management style, excerpted on wired.com. The full article is available for purchase and download at Amazon.

I'm happy to be an Apple customer instead of reporting to Steve!

Intel to Sprout Fins

2011-05-04T13:54:00.000-07:00

Wow, is "FinFET" happening already? It will soon, according to Intel putting fins on at 22-nm.

Intel will ramp manufacturing of these devices next year for their 22nm process shrink of Sandy Bridge CPUs. That appears to be a full process generation ahead of leading foundries such as TSMC, and the low-power advantage would help Intel become more competitive in the elusive mobile market.

Apple Tea Leaves, Viscera or Dark Matter

2011-04-15T16:42:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure which is the right analogy, but in reading A5: All Apple, part mystery, I find this article to (1) be an interesting survey of the state of Apple silicon, and (2) an article that goes on and on but doesn't contain any factual information.

Apple's wall of silence is unprecedented in the industry. While much has been said about Steve Jobs' Reality Distortion Field, equally impressive is the control that Apple exhibits over employees and suppliers to suppress all leaks. Have you seen many Apple presentations at industry conferences?

Jean Jennings Bartik, a Computer Pioneer

2011-04-08T12:31:00.000-07:00

Some pretty cool very early computer history from this obituary: Jean Jennings Bartik, a Computer Pioneer, Dies at 86 - NYTimes.com. Also, Jean Bartik on Wikipedia. Greatest Generation Pioneers, thank you for your contribution to the United States and the Computing profession.

Innovation In EDA

2011-03-31T15:06:00.000-07:00

Each year, EDN magazine has a contest to select the most innovative electronic design products: EDN 2010 Innovation Award finalists:Are you inspired?

The nominees in EDA Tools and ASIC Technologies are

Calibre InRoute, Mentor Graphics. (is this Mentor's answer to Synopsys IC Validator, a winner from last year?)
DRC+, GlobalFoundries
PathFinder, Apache Design Solutions
SoftPatch for RocketVision, GateRocket Inc

Looking back at 2010 EDN Innovation Award winners, there were multiple categories of EDA-related awards, and thus many more EDA nominees. From each category, the winners were

Quartus II Version 9.1 FPGA-design tool, Altera
IC Validator in-design physical-verification solution, Synopsys
Virtuoso Accelerated Parallel Simulator, Cadence Design Systems

Cooley's Take on IPO Candidate Apache Design

2011-03-18T13:36:00.000-07:00

Props to John Cooley for his article looking at Apache Design's history and products. It's been 10 years since the last EDA IPO? Surprising and troubling. Let's hope it's less than a decade for the next one.

Email from John:

           http://www.deepchip.com/gadfly/gad031811.html

     INDUSTRY GADFLY: "A brief history of Apache and its IPO"

                         by John Cooley

  On Monday, Apache Design Solutions, Inc. (APAD) filed to IPO for
  $75 million as a publically traded stock on the NASDAQ.

  The last company to successfully IPO in EDA was 10 years ago.  It
  was Magma, which raised $63 million back in 2001....

           http://www.deepchip.com/gadfly/gad031811.html

RISC versus CISC, Who is #Winning?

2011-03-08T14:21:00.000-08:00

As you may know, I have a soft spot for technology history. I loved going to HotChips and hearing all the old bearded geeks debate CPU architectures, and why x86 often wins despite its warts.

I was delighted to find this couple of blog posts by UC Berkeley Computer Science professor David Patterson, one of the giants of computer architecture (and founding member of the RISC Fan Club):

If RISC and CISC start to look more like one another as they steal good ideas from each other, the architecture won't determine the "winner". Rather, it will hinge on other vital issues such as process technology (Intel wins) and openness (ARM, MIPS lead here).

Finally, if I may add a sophomoric comment, doesn't Prof. Patterson's mug shot remind you of Patrick Stewart (Captain Picard)?

Books About EDA

2011-03-08T13:03:00.000-08:00

I'm intrigued by EDAgraffiti, a new book on our industry and plan to buy a copy. See this good review by Clive Maxfield.

Before that, the only other book I had seen on EDA was about the start of the ASIC industry, Silicon Destiny: The Story of Application Specific Integrated Circuits and Lsi Logic Corporation, which is pretty hard to find.