Archive : 28 May 2015 год

Avago is buying Broadcom for $37billion in a cash and stock deal. According to Avago, the combined company will have the most diversified communications offering available and, with annual revenues of approximately $15bn, will be the top 10 semiconductor companies.

"Today's announcement marks the combination of the unparalleled engineering prowess of Broadcom with Avago's heritage of technology from HP, AT&T and LSI Logic, in a landmark transaction for the semiconductor industry," said Hock Tan, Avago's president and chief executive officer.

"When Henry Nicholas and I founded Broadcom," said Dr Henry Samueli, pictured, Broadcom's chairman, "we had a vision of creating the world leader in communications semiconductors. Today's announcement is a continuation of that vision and we could not think of a better partner for the future than Avago."

Following completion of the transaction, Tan will serve as president and chief executive officer of the combined company, which will be called Broadcom. Dr Samueli will join the board and hold the post of chief technology officer.

Author
Graham Pitcher

Source:  www.newelectronics.co.uk

Xilinx is working with TSMC on the development of products based on the latter's 7nm process technology. It says it expects these devices to be introduced some time in 2017.

"TSMC has been the foundation of our success at 28nm, 20nm and 16nm – what we call our 3Peat," said Moshe Gavrielov, Xilinx' president and CEO. "Its outstanding process technology, 3D stacking technology, and foundry services have enabled Xilinx to build an unparalleled reputation for product excellence, quality, execution and market leadership. We believe TSMC's 7nm technology will be even more transformative for Xilinx."

This will be the fourth consecutive generation where the two companies have worked together on advanced process and CoWoS 3D stacking technology.

"TSMC is pleased to work with Xilinx to enable its fourth generation of breakthrough products," said Mark Liu, president and co-CEO of TSMC. "Our collaboration will bring about a new generation of scaling and 3D integration advantages, built on a proven track record of collaboration and execution by both companies."

Author
Graham Pitcher

Source:  www.newelectronics.co.uk

While FinFET technology has helped to keep leakage under control as process dimensions shrink, dynamic power consumption remains a major concern.

Looking to provide system designers with a better way to explore dynamic power consumption, Mentor Graphics has released the Veloce Power Application software, said to enable accurate, timely and efficient power analysis at the system, RTL and gate levels in complex SoCs.

Gabriele Pulini, product marketing manager with Mentor's emulation division, noted: "Until now, the industry has been looking at the problem in the wrong way because functional bench testing isn't capturing OS boot and applications activity."

According to Mentor, complex SoCs are now verified using live applications that require the OS to be booted and software to run on an emulator. But when designs with significant software content are run on an emulator, the files created are too large for power analysis tools to handle practically.

The Veloce Power Application replaces the file based power analysis flow with an interface to power analysis tools. The Dynamic Read Waveform API allows information to be captured from the power switching activity plot and transferred to power analysis tools. This, the company adds, enables accurate power calculation at the system level, better power exploration at RTL for power budgeting and tradeoffs as well as more accurate power analysis and sign-off at the gate level.

The result is said to be a significant boost in runtime and performance, with early access customers reporting runtime performance improvements of more than 400%.

Author
Graham Pitcher

Source:  www.newelectronics.co.uk