D&R Headline News (March 2014)

Headlines for Monday Mar. 31, 2014

Top Story

Bluetooth Smart's Rise From Obscurity to Mainstream

Teardown.com decided to take a quick look at the Bluetooth Smart adoption rate in the consumer electronic devices we have analyzed.

• SpaceStudio Hardware Software Codesign Tool Expands Offering to New SoC Design Markets
• Imagination's PowerVR Series6 is the first mobile GPU to pass OpenCL 1.2 conformance with Khronos
• Discretix Content Protection Solutions Shipped in More than 250 Million Devices, following Widespread Adoption of its Hardware-Assisted DRM and Link Protection
• Xilinx Enables "Softly" Defined Networks with New Software Defined Specification Environment
• Jasper Launches Sequential Equivalence Checking App to Formally Verify the Functional Equivalence of RTL Implementations
• Marvell Releases New 28nm 10GbE and GbE Packet Processor Product Suite Further Enabling Secure and Power Efficient Solutions for Access Networks

Headlines for Friday Mar. 28, 2014

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Barco Silex Demonstrates 4K Video over IP with JPEG2000 on a single FPGA at NAB 2014

Barco Silex, the leading provider of FPGA based video solutions and JPEG2000 compression IP cores, has upgraded to 4K its well-known Video over IP reference design that integrates Barco Silex JPEG2000 compression and Transport Stream solutions with Xilinx SMPTE 2022 cores on a single Kintex-7 device.

• XIMEA chooses PLDA PCIe DMA IP for their new, 5K camera application
• FinFETs Not the Best Silicon Road
• Will SMIC Narrow Tech Gap?

Headlines for Thursday Mar. 27, 2014

Top Story

EDA Shapes Its Future

Battle lines are being drawn as the EDA industry attempts to grow outside of its traditional markets, but some say not so fast.

• Mobile Building Blocks 2014: Mobile Cores
• Analysis: Synopsys-Coverity Deal Final
• Renesas and Synopsys Expand Automotive Collaboration with VDK Support for Renesas' RH850/E1x MCU Series
• NVIDIA Launches World's First High-Speed GPU Interconnect, Helping Pave the Way to Exascale Computing
• RDA Microelectronics today announced the launch of its RDA8860 WCDMA/EDGE/GSM baseband SoC for the low-cost smartphone market.
• Altera and Intel Extend Manufacturing Partnership to Include Development of Multi-Die Devices

Headlines for Wednesday Mar. 26, 2014

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S3 preps DAC product with a twist

S3 Group Ltd. (Dublin, Ireland), best known as a supplier of design services and intellectual property to the semiconductor, TV and telehealth sectors, is preparing to sell complete ICs – but not under its own name.

• Barco Silex JPEG2000, AES and HMAC IP cores are part of new Barco Alchemy digital cinema projectors
• Jointwave zero-latency video transmission solution on Altera FPGA
• Sunrise Micro Devices Announces Low-Power Bluetooth Smart Radio Core to Get Billions of IoT Sensors Talking
• eInfochips Joins Elite Group of Companies to Tape-Out Silicon at 16nm
• Many-core @ DATE: what if the number of cores is too small?

Headlines for Tuesday Mar. 25, 2014

Top Story

Computers Remain Top Semiconductor End Use Market in 2013; Communications Growing Fast

While computers remained the leading end use application for semiconductors in 2013, the communications end use market grew in 2013 from 2012 and now is almost on par with the size of the computer end use market. The total semiconductor market grew in 2013 by 4.8 percent, so end use markets may have lost a percentage share of the total while still growing in terms of revenue, as the size of the total market pie grew.

• Sunrise Micro Devices is Unlocking the Potential of IoT by Offering Radio Design in IP Form
• Intel Custom Foundry Demonstrates Industry-Leading General Purpose SerDes on 14nm Process
• PLDA and Mentor Graphics strengthen longstanding technical collaboration
• EnVerv Announces Closing of $15.4M Series C Investment Round
• Synopsys Unveils Advanced Mixed-Signal Verification Initiative to Accelerate Regression Testing of Mixed-Signal SoCs
• Synopsys Completes Coverity Acquisition
• IPrium adds 128-APSK and 256-APSK support to QAM Modulator IP Core
• Sonics Partners With Maojet Technology Corp.
• SMIC Offers a Full Set of ESD Protection Service to Enhance the Whole Chip ESD Design for Customers
• Semiconductor IP Market worth $5.63 Billion by 2020
• NVM Express Work Group Incorporates
• Real Intent Unveils Major Enhancements in Ascent XV for Early Detection and Management of Unknowns in Digital Designs

Headlines for Monday Mar. 24, 2014

Top Story

Semis Feel R&D Squeeze

Investors are increasingly rewarding semiconductor companies for short-term returns to shareholders, rather than long term R&D investments, one Wall Street analyst said. If that's true, it marks a significant and unfortunate industry milestone.

• Altera Joins IBM OpenPOWER Foundation to Enable the Development of Next-Generation Data Centers
• Rambus and Nanya Sign Patent License Agreement
• Synopsys Unveils IC Compiler II, Enabling a Game-Changing, 10X Increase in Physical Design Throughput

Headlines for Friday Mar. 21, 2014

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intoPIX and Macnica Americas Demonstrate 4K Future-proof and Interoperable SMPTE2022 JPEG2000 Video Over An IP FPGA Reference Design at NAB 2014

intoPIX has recently introduced together with Macnica Americas a complete SMPTE2022 FPGA reference design that combines both intoPIX JPEG2000 compression and MPEG2-TS cores with Macnica’s SMPTE2022 IP-core to carry 3G-SDI with JPEG2000 compression over ST2022 1-2 on an Altera Stratix V FPGA. Leveraging Macnica’s ST2022 5-6 IP-cores, it can also carry uncompressed 3G-SDI over 10G network.

• Mentor Graphics Acquires Berkeley Design Automation to Advance Nanometer Analog/Mixed-Signal Verification
• Three Companies to Account for 52% of Semiconductor CapEx in 2014
• North American Semiconductor Equipment Industry Posts February 2014 Book-to-Bill Ratio of 1.00

Headlines for Thursday Mar. 20, 2014

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ChaoLogix Introduces ChaoSecure Technology to Boost Semiconductor Chip Security for Applications from Smart Cards to Smartphones

ChaoLogix, Inc., a semiconductor technology provider focused on developing embedded security and low-power design intellectual property, today introduced ChaoSecure™ technology that deters side channel attacks on semiconductor chips and contributes a superior layer of security compared to existing solutions.

• Kilopass Appoints Colin Bill as Chief Scientist To Lead Next Generation of Product Innovation
• KALRAY to showcase low power, live Ultra HD (4K) HEVC encoder at CCBN 2014 in collaboration with DivX
• GloFo Shows Progress in 3D Stacks
• TrueChip Solutions Gets Great Customer Response at DVCon 2014

Headlines for Wednesday Mar. 19, 2014

Top Story

GIT Japan Uses CAST 8051 in AIST's MEMS-EFS Electrostatic Sensor

GIT Japan has used an 8051 IP core licensed from CAST, Inc. in a custom chip GIT developed for Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST). The 8051-managed chip implements AIST’s research on applying Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems Electrostatic Field Sensors (MEMS-EFS) to detecting and measuring static charges.

• Elliptic Technologies End-to-End DTCP+ Content Protection Solutions Selected by TP Vision
• CEVA, SMIC and Brite Semiconductor Partner to Provide Hard Macro Versions of CEVA DSP Cores and Platforms
• Cortus and Secure-IC Team up to Secure Smart Cards
• USB-IF Completes Media Agnostic USB Specification
• Magillem to commercialize STMicroelectronics TLM modelling environment and methodology

Headlines for Tuesday Mar. 18, 2014

Top Story

Sonics Introduces SoC Performance Profile and Debug IP for System Architects and Software Developers

Sonics today introduced Sonics Performance Monitor and Hardware Trace™ (SonicsMT™), a new semiconductor intellectual property (IP) product that accelerates the post-silicon system validation and software development processes for complex systems-on-chip (SoC).

• intoPIX Demonstrates First TICO Lightweight Compression Technology Running on FPGA Hardware at NAB 2014
• Imagination and Unity partner to bring Imagination's breakthrough ray tracing technology to real time, interactive games
• Imagination Technologies delivers revolution in graphics with new Wizard family of PowerVR Ray Tracing GPUs
• eMemory's SIP NeoFuse Received CA Certification For Advanced Security Applications
• Why Intel Shouldn't Build an ARM Chip
• MediaTek Embarking On Deployment of Synopsys IC Compiler for Hierarchical Design Implementation

Headlines for Monday Mar. 17, 2014

Top Story

Big sell: IP Trends and Strategies

Experts at the table: Continued strong growth for semiconductor intellectual property (IP) through 2017 has been forecast by Semico Research. Semiconductor Manufacturing & Design invited Steve Roddy, Product Line Group Director, IP Group at Cadence, Bob Smith, Senior Vice President of Marketing and Business Development at Uniquify and Grant Pierce, CEO at Sonics to discuss how the IP landscape is changing and provide some perspectives, as the industry moves to new device architectures.

• Aquantia Completes $16M Series G Financing
• Khronos Releases OpenGL ES 3.1 Specification
• Cadence Incisive Specman Elite Testbench Reduces Verification Time for Sharp by 50 Percent

Headlines for Friday Mar. 14, 2014

Top Story

IoT Creates New IP Requirements

Realizing the full potential of the Internet of Things will require a cohesive hardware and software design approach.

• Will Googles of the World Be Cadence's Best Bet?
• Mikron Licenses Cadence Physical Verification System and QRC Extraction Solutions for 90 nm IC Design Flow

Headlines for Thursday Mar. 13, 2014

Top Story

Mobiveil's UNEX NVM Express IP Passes University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL) Testing

Industry's First UNH-Certified NVM Express Controller IP on the NVM Express Integrators List; UNEX NVM Express IP Ensures SoC Designs Will Be Compliant and Interoperable With Enterprise Server Platforms and Operating Systems

• IC Market for Total Personal Computing Systems to Jump 6% in 2014
• Dolphin Integration reveals the first audio converter IP with voice detection feature for home appliance electronics
• Cadence and GLOBALFOUNDRIES Announce First Test Chip Featuring ARM Cortex-A12 Processor in 28nm-SLP Process

Headlines for Wednesday Mar. 12, 2014

• TSMC Updates 1Q'14 Guidance
• MoSys Demonstrates 15.625G Bandwidth Engine SerDes Interoperability with Xilinx's Kintex UltraScale FPGA at OFC 2014
• Embedded System Demand Could Reach Almost 19m Units by 2020 says Strategy Analytics
• SEMI Reports 2013 Global Semiconductor Equipment Sales of $31.6 Billion
• Cadence Expands ARM-based System Verification Solution, Reducing Time-to-Market for Mobile, Networking and Server Applications

Headlines for Tuesday Mar. 11, 2014

Top Story

Creonic to Deliver IP Cores for the New DVB-S2X Standard

Creonic announced the availability of demodulator and decoder IP cores for the new DVB-S2X specification that was approved recently by the Steering Board of the DVB project. For professional applications, DVB-S2X achieves spectral efficiency gains of up to 50%, drastically reducing OPEX.

• Barco Silex Part of Major VSF J2K Interop Event
• Cadence Physical Verification System Certified for GLOBALFOUNDRIES 65nm to 14nm FinFET Processes
• Synopsys Announces STMicroelectronics' Adoption of IC Compiler for CPU and GPU Implementation
• New Xilinx Reference Designs Equip Customers with Industry's Only Single-Chip Solution for 4x100G OTN Transponders and 2x100G OTN Switching Applications
• Altera Introduces OTN Solutions for 400G and Beyond at OFC 2014
• Leti Demonstrates Ultra-scaled Self-aligned Split-gate Memory Cell With 16nm Gate Length

Headlines for Monday Mar. 10, 2014

• ASIC Design Start Market Expected to Grow 7.1% in 2014, Says Semico Research
• Apple Design Wins Lift Bosch to Top of MEMS Ranking
• Xilinx Announces Availability of Industry's First High Performance DDR4 Memory Solution
• Renesas Maintains Position as Leading Vendor of OE Automotive Semiconductors, but Infineon Closes Owing to Weakened Yen
• TSMC February 2014 Revenue Report
• UMC Reports Sales for February 2014

Headlines for Friday Mar. 07, 2014

Top Story

Chips&Media releases CFrame10, its new hardware design for frame buffer compression

Chips&Media announced today that they have signed licensing agreements with some of major SoC manufacturers in the US and other regions for their lossless frame buffer compression solution. They said development of this standalone IP had already been completed in the fourth quarter of 2013 and recently it has started to ship.

• Digital Core Design unveils 32bit CPU during CeBIT 2014
• Samsung Proliferates the Internet of Things with the Addition of RF Capabilities to its 28nm Process Technology for Foundry Customers
• 10 IC Product Segments to Exceed Total IC Market Growth in 2014

Headlines for Thursday Mar. 06, 2014

Top Story

EDA Hungers For Growth

Look at the top line numbers provided by the EDA industry consortium (EDAC) and it appears as if the industry is doing well. In 2010, revenue was $5.285 billion. That number increased to $6.218 billion in 2011, and again to $6.529 billion in 2012, a 9.5% annual growth rate that would satisfy most investors. But the numbers do not tell the whole story. There is an interesting divide growing between the top three EDA companies and those from neighboring industries.

• Arasan Chip Systems Starts 10th year as contributing member in MIPI Alliance
• NXP: 'We Need to Be More Chinese'
• Fab Equipment Spending to Increase 20-30 Percent in 2014
• GUC Monthly Sales Report - February 2014
• Imagination Technologies Group plc - Interim Management Statement
• Altera and Intilop sign an agreement to offer intilop's UDP/TCP & EMAC IP cores embedded with OpenCL development Kit for end users and developers
• Aldec Presents a Visual Mapping Solution to Capture a Bird's-eye View of UVM Verification Environments

Headlines for Wednesday Mar. 05, 2014

Top Story

ARM to Drive Tablet & Set-Top SoC Convergence

The battle over the digital TV market among semiconductor companies is undergoing a quiet but major transformation, as key players reshuffle and target devices multiply.

• KnC Announce "Tape out" of the World's first 20nm ASIC for Bitcoin Mining
• Argon Design Through its Partner ChipStart Licenses HEVC/H.265 Streams Technology to Advanced Micro Devices
• IDC Expects PC Shipments to Fall by -6% in 2014 and Decline Through 2018
• StreamDSP Announces 20nm Device Support For its sFPDP IP Core, Enabling Serial FPDP in Altera Arria-10 and Xilinx UltraScale Devices
• Startup Describes Proprietary Non-Volatile Memory Technology
• Startup Slashes SRAM Power With Standard Logic Process
• EEMBC Benchmark to Reveal the Truth Behind Microcontroller Ultra-Low Power Claims
• EasyEDA Launches Web-Based EDA: Integrates Schematic Capture, Mixed Mode Circuit Simulation, PCB Layout and Supply
• Mentor Graphics Proposes New Accellera Standards Committee for Graph-Based Test Specification Standard
• Northwest Logic Named Best Overall Supplier by ChipStart for 2013
• Cadence Announces New Allegro TimingVision Environment to Speed Timing Closure of High-Speed PCB Interfaces by up to 67%
• Marvell Extends its 4G LTE Leadership with the Introduction of the 64-bit Single-Chip Mobile Processor with Production-Ready 5-Mode Modem

Headlines for Tuesday Mar. 04, 2014

Top Story

Mobiveil's GPEX PCI Express 3.0 IP Passes PCI-SIG PCIe 3.0 Compliance Testing

Mobiveil today announced that its GPEX™ PCI Express® (PCIe®) 3.0 endpoint controller passed PCI-SIG® Gold and Interoperability testing. To achieve compliance, the IP must pass protocol, electrical and interoperability testing for PCIe Gen3 8GT/s. Mobiveil's GPEX has a highly flexible and configurable IP design targeted for end-points or root complex type devices, as well as switches and bridge implementations.

• Global Semiconductor Industry Posts Highest-Ever January Sales
• Sibridge Technologies Enhances Ethernet IP Cores with IEEE 1588 PTP
• Synopsys Introduces Verification Compiler to Enable 3X Productivity

Headlines for Monday Mar. 03, 2014

Top Story

Recore Systems releases a many-core processor subsystem IP-on-FPGA

Recore Systems today releases a many-core processor subsystem IP connecting Recore Xentium DSP cores, a General Purpose Processor, and other IP blocks in a heterogeneous many-core processor architecture via a hybrid Network-on-Chip/AMBA bus interconnect.

• Sonics, Inc. and Duolog Technologies Partner to Deliver IP-XACT Design Flow that Accelerates SoC Integration
• 6-core 16nm FinFET ARM Cortex-A57 chips spotted in the wild
• Semtech Announces Ultra-High Speed ADC and DAC for Advanced Communication Systems
• Imagination and partners deliver products to drive the next generation of mobile lifestyles at MWC 2014
• Gartner Says Worldwide Tablet Sales Grew 68 Percent in 2013, With Android Capturing 62 Percent of the Market