Monthly Archives: July 2009

What’s In a Chip? Reverse Engineer It to Find Out

Posted on July 29, 2009 by John Donovan

I had an interesting meeting today at DAC with Julia Elvidge, the president of Chipworks. Chipworks basically reverse engineers chips to find out exactly what makes them tick. The results may surprise you—they certainly did me. I must admit I’ve … Continue reading →

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CPF and UPF Converge

Posted on July 27, 2009 by John Donovan

At DAC two years ago Cadence launched it’s Common Power Format (CPF), while down the hall Mentor, Synopsys, Magma and several semiconductor firms launched the rival Uniform Power Format (UPF). Cadence wanted to keep control of its power specification format, … Continue reading →

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Gary Smith (Informally) Launches DAC

Posted on July 27, 2009 by John Donovan

DAC traditionally begins on Sunday evening at the EDAC reception, where you can drink Merlot or Heineken and hear Gary Smith weigh in on the state of the industry. You then get a refill and start looking around for long-lost … Continue reading →

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The RF Challenge in Portable Designs

Posted on July 21, 2009 by John Donovan

In simpler times most designs were digital. Add a few converters to handle I/O and you could ship the product. Consumer electronics—and cell phones in particular—changed all that. Now there are few consumer designs that don’t involve a large analog/mixed-signal … Continue reading →

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Clean Energy Jobs Take Off

Posted on July 2, 2009 by John Donovan

The Pew Charitable Trusts have released a study of clean energy jobs, the first hard count of that market. The Pew study shows that job sector grew by 9.1% between 1998 and 2007 compared to overall job growth of 3.7% … Continue reading →

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