Blog Review: June 9
By Ed Sperling
Mentor’s Colin Walls looks at the uses of asymmetric vs. symmetric multiprocessing and where each gets the most traction. Better get used to this stuff. If chip design goes 3D there’s going to be a lot of the asymmetric stuff to contend with.
Synopsys’ Karen Bartleson has a schedule of old media, new media and non-media speakers to be held at Conversation Central at DAC, and posted forever afterward. And just in case you’ve missed that, check out Rick Jamison’s blog. He has a copy of the same schedule attached to his blog.
So whom can you believe? Old media? New media? Non-media? Cadence’s Tom Anderson takes a stab at that question and what makes a professional blogger…well…professional. There’s no clear answer, but a lot of people get quite emotional over this subject. It’s sort of like talking about politics or religion at Thanksgiving dinner. More turkey, anyone?
Daniel Nenni sheds light on TSMC’s new analog/mixed signal flow, version 1.0. You’ve got to start somewhere, but most software companies now start products at version 3.0 so it doesn’t look like it’s the first version. Apparently that logic doesn’t apply in foundry reference flows. Still, this is a big step in the right direction.
Rumors are flying that Synopsys is on the hunt for more acquisitions. You don’t have to go very far to confirm that, of course. Ask any top exec at Synopsys and they’ll gladly offer up that acquisitions are part of the growth strategy. Scratch the surface a little deeper and you find the company has $1.08 billion in cash. Which begs the question, who’s on the short list? John Cooley’s DeepChip offers some ideas.
If you’re looking for a succinct definition of clock-gating retention latches, check out the entry from Synopsys’ Godwin Maben.
What’s behind Lenaro, the open-source consortium of companies that includes ARM, TI, Freescale, ST-Ericsson and IBM? ARM’s Kerry McGuire takes a look under the covers.
Mentor’s Ping Yeung is bucking the trend on static verification. He’s a fan.
Finally, Si2’s Steve Schulz reveals what the group is doing at DAC next week. It’s a serious effort to add standardization into semiconductor engineering, but the location may cast a different tone on the overall proceedings. Anaheim is the only city that can give a different meaning to “Mickey Mouse design.”
Tags: ARM, Cadence, Freescale, IBM, Lenaro, Mentor Graphics, ST-Ericsson, Synopsys, TI