( ESNUG 521 Item 3 ) -------------------------------------------- [03/28/13]
Subject: News & Rumors on TSMC CoWaS, IJTAG, OneSpin, ARM, KiloPass, Pulsic
ITEM 3: Here's the latest news & rumors I've heard about EDA and fabs since
my prior post. Feel free to comment/correct/scold anything you see here!
- The Chinese-language Economic Daily News reported on March 4th that
both Xilinx and Altera are abandoning the TSMC CoWoS process for PoP
packaging for their next-generation chips. One EDA vendor commented:
"If those high margin FPGA guys cannot make CoWoS viable
right now who will? This seems like a major setback for
TSMC and 3D IC in general... yet tons of folks are in
the test chip phase with different flavors of solutions
and approaches to this ecosystem."
In related news, that same Chinese newspaper also later reported:
"TSMC originally planned to win Apple orders for high-end
testing and packaging for a new generation of iPhones with
CoWoS (Chip-on-Wafer-on-Substrate) technology, but industry
sources said it has not proceeded as smoothly as expected."
And as a result, Apple reportedly will stick to the older PoP
(package on package) packaging/testing technology.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
- Mentor's yet-another-new-test-thingy now is Tessent IJTAG -- which
is the IEEE P1687 standard for scan testing IP blocks inside a chip.
Let's you do plug-and-play, pattern reuse, stacked die, etc. Did
a webinar on going from 1149.1 to P1687. Claim AMD and NXP use it.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
- Don't bother going to the DVclub.org web page. Some hacker attacked
it right after Dean Drako of IC Manage gave his IP Reuse 2.0 talk at
their last DV Club meeting -- and DVclub.org hasn't been up since.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
- Turns out at the EDAC CEO Panel, Rich Valera of Needham & Company
presented a survey of EDAC members that cited Oasys, OneSpin, and
Berkeley as EDA's top 3 "hottest" start-ups. I got Raik Brinkmann
of OneSpin on the phone in Germany and pushed him hard for his
honest uncensored 1st reaction to this news. He said:
"OK, I thought: 'Oje! Totgesagte leben länger!'"
- Raik Brinkmann, CEO of OneSpin Solitions, GmbH
CRAP. It's German. Google says it's "Geez, the dead live longer".
Huh? Lot of searching. German proverb which means "We're back!".
(He sure taught me about wanting uncensored 1st reactions. Ouch!)
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
- Another OneSpin rumor is Dave Kelf is now there. Kelf's known for
his prior work on SuperLog -- which later became "System Verilog"
after Aart bought it in 2002. Maybe OneSpin is moving to the U.S.?
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
- FUN QUOTE:
"But Warren's so young!"
- Simon Segars on getting the news he's the new CEO
of ARM since 51 year-old Warren East is retiring.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
- Who's this mystery $8 M funder of Kilopass? Kilopass puts out a
press release saying some unknown customer gave them $8 million
to keep the doors open; but they refuse to say who! Inquiring
minds want to know!
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
- Too funny! The ProPlus Design people tried to pass off on me that
their "NanoSPICE" simulator was NEW. (AND **** ME, I ALMOST FELL
FOR IT!) It turns out that the ProPlus marketing weasels had
already announced it 9 months ago at DAC'12! WHAT COMPLETE LIARS!!!
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
- GOOD NEWS - North American manufacturers of semiconductor equipment
posted $1.07 billion in orders in February making a book-to-bill
ratio of 1.10. That's $110 worth of orders were received for every
$100 of product billed for the month. (More new orders coming in.)
The Japanese equivalent posted a book-to-bill of 1.17 for February.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
- FUN FACT:
Sales of 2011 Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) & Sensors
TI: ############################ $913 M
STmicro: ############################ $907
HP: ####################### $762
Bosch: ###################### $738
Knowles: ########### $362
Panasonic: ########## $336
Canon: ######### $284
AKM: ######## $279
Seiko-Epson : ######## $261
Analog Devices: ######## $255
Avago: ######## $251
Freescale: ######## $250
Denso: ####### $237
Sensata: ###### $174
Honeywell: #### $153
Total MEMS sales grew 17% to $10.2 billion in 2011 (Yole)
MEMS are small chips fabbed to act as tiny sensors for pressure,
acceleration, temp, gyroscopes, microphones, or for piezoelectric
Inkjet heads, or for bio stuff, or as micro-scanning-mirrors.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
- The U.K.-based Pulsic Unity Analog Router just announced it won some
sort of switched-capacitor design time benchmark with a 59% reduction
in the STARC Analog IP Reuse Design Flow inside Cadence IC 6.1.5 OA.
My congrats go to all the ex-Zuken guys at Pulsic for winning this.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
- SCOOP! In today's ESNUG 521 #5 you'll see that Solido has quietly
added "netlist-only" Spectre input support. Helps Cadence break
the memory/std cell SPICE monopoly Aart bought with Magma. YAY!
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
- If you plan to see the EDAC Jim Hogan interview of Joe Costello
on May 1st in San Jose, you better reserve your ticket NOW. So
far 126 people have registered and seating is limited to 175!
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
And again, feel free to comment/correct/scold/question anything you see here
by just emailing me directly. And, yes, you'll be ANONYMOUS!
- John Cooley
DeepChip.com Holliston, MA
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