JB's Circuit

While not the primary theme at this year’s Globalpress eSummit 2012, low power concerns were present in almost every presentation as these snippets reveal.

Altera – Jeff Waters, Seniro VP and GM

• HardCopy (structured ASIC product) can further reduce power as compared to FPGAs by hardwiring a good portion of the chip. For reference, a chip company needs 30 million units at $10 per unit for an ASIC implementation to make sense.
• Servers become more application specific to handle social media, financial, and other segments. The growth in these segments means that servers must also become more power sensitivity. One approach – used by IBM – is to mix CPUs with specialized accelerators to help reduce power by removing general purpose processors. [Interesting footnote: Intel is working with FPGA vendors Altera and Acrhonix to develop both desktop and server chips.]

Tensilica – Chris Rowen, PhD, CTO

• For mobile phone designs, the voice requirements are outpacing bothMoore’s Law and battery technology. Designers will need to innovate more than just ride the wave of silicon technology (Moore’s Law). Mobile phones need increasing lower power matched with higher performance. Unfortunately, battery technology only improves by a couple percent per year.
• Advanced audio and voice methods for mobile devices have become much more DSP intensive to handle noise control as in a car, beam forming microphone arrays and Always-on Voice recognition. The later needs low latency but also low power. Local extraction of phonemes (the individual sounds used to create speech) using Hidden Markov Models (used in speech recognition). These devices need to be “Always on” so you can have the illusion of being “Always off.”
• The host CPU in a smart phone can not keep up with audio requirements. Power is critical. ARM cortex process is a great CPU, but not a great DSP. There is a big gap in performance – 15x between running audio codec on optimized DSP verses a general CPU.

… Editorial in progress – more to follow …

The French technology center fosters growth through hardware-software integration while sharing technical IP, business and marketing expenses.

Laurent Julliard, Director at Minalogic in Grenoble, FR.

The commoditization of hardware – an acknowledgement of the availability of inexpensive integrated circuits – has spurred tremendous growth in the software side of the electronics business. While this is not a new trend, its affects continue to ripple throughout the world of traditional hardware giants. Consider STMicroelectronics, one of Europe’s premier semiconductor chip providers. Over the last few years, the company has undergone a “culture change,” observed Laurent Julliard, Director at Minalogic, during a recent interview at the DesignWest (formerly ESC) show.

“ST Micro now makes its technology available to small companies,” said Julliard. This technology exchange, combined with the economic incentives provided by the Minalogic group, has fueled the growth of many new startup companies in France’s Grenoble area. The goal of the Minalogic (Micro NAnotechnologies et LOgiciel Grenoble-Isère Compétitivité) global consortium is to support the integration of micro nanotechnologies hardware and embedded software system. Several academic research partners are also involved in the centre, including CEA-LETI. (see, “R&D Focuses on Low Power and Stacked Die”)

During our brief meeting, Julliard highlighted a few of the exceptional startups:

• The Snowball board and the Igloo community that came out of a project founded by Minalogic
• Tiempo IC, design house of true asynchronous microcontrollers. (see, “Is Asynchronous Technology Ready For Prime Time?)
• Kalray, low power massively parallel embedded architecture,  Contrast Kalray’s approach to that of Intel’s many cores (see, “IP Core Interconnect leads to MARC at IDF2011″) [Related side note: The OpenMP API specification for parallel programming announced parallel language support for automotive, aeronautics, biotech, and financial applications during the DesignWest timeframe.]
• Docea Power, new generation of methodology and tools for enabling faster more reliable power and thermal modeling at the system level.  (see, “The Trouble With Power Models”)

Tiempo clockless 16-bit microcontroller core (TAM16) test chip.

In many ways, France’s Minalogic is similar to Belgium’s IMEC technology partnership and business model. (see, “Avoid IP Patent Battles with Open Innovation?“) Both models aim to foster innovation through the sharing and transfer of intellectual property. Julliard explained that the Minalogic consortium members decide how IP will be used, either in an open or proprietary model. But the benefits of the partnership extend beyond IP to include the sharing of sales and marketing channels, which can often determine the success or failure of a start-up.

The rise of the social, mobile Alpha-Influencers segment opens new horizons for the game-related technology and content-services industries.

The stellar growth of social media and mobile devices has changed the entire gaming market. Dubbed Alpha Influencers in a recent IGN.com report, early-adopter game players are impacting both entertainment-content sites and the embedded hardware-software game-development ecosystem.

Who will service this growing market segment in terms of technology and content? The “content” lines between these two industries are becoming blurred. Chip and embedded-board companies now offer inexpensive mobile games and social-media communities, following the lead of traditional consumer game-console giants like Microsoft, Nintendo, Sega, Sony, and others. How can media and electronic companies work together to satisfy the attention and ravenous online appetites of Alpha Influencers?

Gamers Dilemma

Technology’s relentless march to the drumbeat of Moore’s Law means gaming systems of all kinds have gotten faster, better, and cheaper. Ever-increasing processor power in shrinking form factors has opened the flood gates on new technology platforms—especially in the mobile space.

These changes—combined with the rise of the social-media phenomenon—have resulted in three key gaming segments, explains Peer Schneider, SVP of content & publisher, IGN Entertainment. (This online media and game-services site has roots in the electronic-design-automation [EDA] and semiconductor world. Originally co-founded by Ken Keller, who also co-foundedCadence Design Systems, the company has grown through acquisitions into one of the premier sites for gaming and entertainment enthusiasts.)

In a recent study, IGN.com confirmed the major changes that are taking place in the gaming world. Smart phones—mainly the iPhone and Android platforms—have emerged as dominant players in the mobile-gaming space. Furthermore, almost half of all gamers now play games on smart phones or tablets. This translates into considerable social-media influence and potentially huge revenues for game-related companies.

Figure 1: Investment dollars are favoring the “online-mobile” world for both hardcore and casual gamers.

How big is this market? An annual report by game investment advisor Digi-Capital states that the game industry had a record year of $2 billion (growing 160%) for investments and acquisitions in 2011. The social, mobile, massively multiplayer online and middleware sectors led the industry, according to Tim Merel, managing director at Digi-Capital and author of the report (see Figure 1).

The Alpha Influencers are the early technology adopters. Highly active on the social network, they share their real or imagined expertise on all things related to technology. They tend to be the highest wage earners of all three segments and married with children.

Figure 2: This image depicts the gaming segments in 2011. (Courtesy of IGN.com)

The Social Mainstreamers are by far the largest group, representing the mass-market gamers. To them, gaming is but one of their many online activities, which include listening to music and watching movies. Mainstreamers are very social and active on Facebook and Twitter. Unlike Alpha Influencers, this group isn’t the first to pick up new technology trends. But their critical mass decides whether the trend will go mainstream.

While the last segment may be somewhat smaller in size, it will never disappear. The traditional core gamer is very brand-centric. Once a brand earns the core gamer’s support, that gamer remains loyal for a lifetime. This group is more insular than the other segments, preferring the company of fellow core gamers rather than the other, more socially inclined groups. These players are slower to adopt new social-media services like Facebook and Twitter. Instead, they prefer Internet forums like NeoGAF (formerly named the Gaming Age Forums).

Game Market Challenge

For many game developers and content-service providers, the main challenge is how to keep the traditional brand-centric core happy while wooing the growing population of social-media-adept and mobile consumers. This isn’t a trivial issue, as solving it will decide the winners in a large and booming market.

Schneider explains that this challenge has taken a new turn with the emergence of Alpha Influencers as major players. “For example, the way we cover games for the console and PC platforms won’t work for an iOS audience, because they go to the Apple Apps store to download games. They don’t go online to seek games or related content.”

This exemplifies the problem with the new mobile game player. Unlike the traditional core gamer, few Alpha Influencer (early-adopter) gamers go online to seek walk-throughs to overcome different portions of a game or even to read helpful reviews. Those reactions don’t yet seem to be part of their mobile-gaming experience. Content providers will have to find other ways to reach this emerging segment. At the same time, they’ll have to maintain traditional communication modes with mainstream and core gamers.

Further complicating the challenge wrought by the emerging game market segmentation is the rise of mega-franchises, notes Schneider. “Mega-franchise games are now so huge that people search for them on Google rather than on actual platform sites.” Consider Activision’s latest update to the “Call-of-Duty” franchise, Modern Warfare 3. It sold more than 6.5 million copies in the first 24 hours after its release. Total sales for the Call-of-Duty series now exceed the box-office sales for the Star Wars and Lord of the Ringsfilm series, notes an Activision spokesman.

How does a gamer destination site like IGN.com maintain its core following while expanding into the mobile-online game segment and mega-franchises? This is a question that all content providers are wrestling with—namely, how to provide the right content to the right audience on the right type of device. What is the correct balance of niche-to-general coverage? How will the different devices—ranging from mobile smart phones, tablets, and gaming handsets to desktops, TV-game consoles, and others—dictate the type and amount of content to display?

Chip Sites Get in the Game

The stellar growth potential of the gaming industry hasn’t been lost on the electronic ecosystem—from chip and board companies to consumer consoles. A quick look at the upcoming Game Developers conference offers a glimpse of the increased hardware and software tools aimed at game development.

On the hardware side, chip companies are offering ever-faster processors, graphic engines, and sensor platforms for both mobile devices and consoles (e.g., Intel, AMD, ARM, Imagination Technologies, nVidia, ATI, IBM, Freescale, and others). These hardware offerings also include a software-development environment to help game designers optimize to and prototype on given hardware architectures.

To address the inherent tradeoffs between performance and power consumption between mobile and console devices, most hardware vendors highlight the scalability of their chip sets. Scalability is one way to shield the game developer from the challenges of migrating between different hardware platforms (including the cloud-based systems favored by many mobile devices).

Figure 3: Playstation’s Vita merges the real world and the game world via augmented reality.

Another processor-intensive tradeoff for mobile-gaming devices is augmented reality, which requires real-time data synchronization with the user’s physical world. Augmented-reality features are appearing in many new gaming devices and mobile phones. For example, Sony PlayStation’s new Vita touts augmented-reality capabilities (see Figure 3). At this year’s recent Mobile World Congress, Intel announced the expanded growth of its mobile-phone offerings, which includes an augmented-reality feature set.

In addition to new hardware offerings, chip companies continue to move into the software space. Hardware providers are creating their own “apps” stores, which are tailored to their unique platforms. Last year, Intel announced its “Appup” store, which included mobile and PC game applications. Graphic hardware giant nVidia’s TegraZone offers inexpensive mobile games that are optimized for Tegra-powered devices, including Android-based tablets and smart phones (see Figure 4). In addition, gamer sites like Ign.com might team up with semiconductor-chip-company sites to target content to social-media and mobile-gaming enthusiasts in the Alpha-Influencer player segment.

Figure 4: Inexpensive mobile games are now being offered for Tegra-powered devices.

Yet faster mobile processors and graphic chips still don’t provide enough raw processing power to satisfy today’s mobile-game and social-media applications. That’s why server-based cloud-computing technology has become an essential element in mobile applications. For example, game middleware vendors are using the cloud to offer more and varied tools for game developers. Middleware vendors provide an integrated development environment of reusable software components. These components simplify game creation with key elements like graphics, sound, and realistic visual effects. Among these companies are Autodesk, Unreal, Epic, and Unity—to name a few.

Even software-centric, game-console companies like Microsoft see the convergence of game application and hardware systems. During a recent presentation at DesignCon, Ilan Spillinger, VP for hardware and technology within Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Business, acknowledged the shift toward more pervasive displays (graphics), cloud computing, and the integration of more sensors as key gaming trends.

The social-media and mobile-gaming movements have certainly left their marks on the traditional game-console market. Electronic companies must provide ever-faster mobile and server-based platforms to satisfy the needs of this growing market. Online-media and game-services companies also must adapt by offering customized content that is targeted to each audience segment on a myriad of display and device options—ranging from smart phones and tablets to PCs and consoles.

The lines are blurring between who provides content to whom and in what fashion. Electronic companies continue to move into the social-media and gaming worlds, while media providers are targeting content for every imaginable electronic device. To the gaming consumer, however, these blurring lines are irrelevant. The only thing that matters is the quality of their online experience.

* Originally posted on Chipestimate.com “IP Insider“

Will the creation of a repeatable, single-atom transistor mean the end of Moore’s Law and IP as we know it?

Yesterday, every technology-focused website posted some news variation about the creation of the first, repeatable single-atom transistor. What does this event mean to the semiconductor IP community?

Scientists have created a working transistor consisting of a single atom placed precisely in a silicon crystal

 Scientists from the University of New South Wales created a single-atom transistor using a precise and repeatable technique. The key word is “repeatable” which was achieved with the help of a scanning-tunneling microscope (STM). Using the STM, scientists were able to precisely manipulate hydrogen atoms around a phosphorus atom on a silicon wafer.

Although repeatable with great precision, this achievement does not mean the process is commercially viable – at least, not yet. Nevertheless, this breakthrough may accelerate the end game for Moore’s Law. Beyond the single atom lies the world of quantum computing, one which will change the way that chips are designed and manufactured. We’ll examine the quantum computing aspects of this achievement in another blog.

What does it mean to have a single-atom transistor? To answer that, we need to remember that a transistor – regardless of its size – is a device that amplifies and control the flow of an electrical current. When arranged in the proper configuration, transistors can form the very complex logic circuits that are the foundation of today’s computer systems.

Transistors where once the size of vacuum tubes before the creation of solid state manufacturing technology.

The University of New South Wales device meets the definition of a transistor but with one serious restriction. Their single-atom transistor must be kept as cold as liquid nitrogen, or minus 391 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 196 Celsius). According to the scientists, the atom sits in a channel. The flowing electrons must stay in the channel for the transistor to operate. If the temperature rises, then the electrons will gain more energy and move outside of the channel.

In theory, a logic circuit formed from single-atom transistors would be incredibly small. To put this in perspective, Intel’s latest chip, called “Sandy Bridge,” is manufactured with roughly 2.3 billion transistors spaced 32 nanometers apart. A single phosphorus atom is just 0.1 nanometers wide, which would result in incredibly small processors and thus the resulting electronic systems. But as Moore’s’ Law reaches the single-atom stage, look for even greater problems with leakage power and performance.

IP for Single-Atom Transistors?

What does an atom-sized transistor mean to the semiconductor IP community? We can understand the affect by extrapolation from the experience of the last several decades of Moore’s law. IP design and manufacturability is closely tied to the physical contrast and materials of the actual chip.

In a past blog, Neil Hand, group marketing director of SoC Realization at Cadence, explained that IP has always been tied to the manufacturing process and is becoming even more closely tied because of the move to more advanced geometries. He was quick to point out that the relationship to the process differs depending upon the nature of the IP, i.e., whether it is soft or hard IP.

Soft IP isn’t as closely tied to the underlying process as hard IP. Still, an understanding of process capabilities does allow the IP architecture to be optimized for better performance and power. Leveraging the process benefits means that the same IP can be used on different platforms—just as the same video-decoding/decompression IP can be implemented in everything from handsets to home theaters.

On the other hand, hard IP has a tightly coupled architecture that’s determined by underlined process capabilities and physical properties, Hand explains. “It would be impossible to divorce hard IP from the process. As a result, IP companies will be required to have deep in-house process expertise.”

Perhaps this is why IP giants are aligning themselves more closely to the manufacturing process. For example, ARM’s recent acquisition of Prolific, a chip design services company, should strengthen ARM’s physical IP position – including logic, embedded memory and interface cores – at the more troublesome lower nodes.

Will single-atom transistor architectures mean “game over” for Moore’s law? Probably not, since Moore’s law is an economic prediction, not a scientific theory. One way to ensure the continuation of the law is to reduce manufacturing costs. The emerging trend of using 3D layered ICs at existing or even higher process nodes will help reduce these costs while maintaining performance, at least with respect to factors such as device battery life, screen size, weight and others.

An accurate, repeatable process for creating single-atom transistors will bring significant changes to the world of chip design. Semiconductor IP, especially hard IP, is directly affected by any manufacturing changes. Further, IP will need to evolve in other ways, as it current is doing to accommodate 3D die stacking at existing nodes.

Is the IP community up to the change? If the past is any indication, then the answer is definitely – game on!

While growing, analog and wireless IP usage may face challenges in manufacturing preferences at lower nodes and emerging LTE technology trends.

Full story at IP Insider.

A lot of stories pass through my email in any given week. Here’s a collection of those bits that caught my attention, covering technology, engineering, science and social media. – JB

AWR, a developer of RF and Microwave modeling tools, was recently issued a patent for the automatic creation of vias in electrical circuit design. Will this be the start of via litigations?

The BBC seems to think that Twitter is the enemy. The British media giant has released a new version of its social media policies that instructs reports to file update to news editors first, instead of posting breaking news to Twitter.

Gigaom has acquired paidContent. Why should you care? It represents the growing change in the media market, one that Ed Sperling realized over 4 years ago when he started our first technology portal – System Level Design. Gigaom puts it this way: “What happens when the costs of reproduction and distribution go away? What happens when there is nothing unique about publishing anymore because users can do it for themselves?’

Does a degree in engineering or the hard sciences improve your odds at long term career success? Not necessarily, postulates Daniel Jelski, a professor of chemistry at SUNY New Paltz. He suggests that, “the answer is “non-tradable skills that can’t be computerized. At their most valuable these jobs depend on human-human interaction – empathy.” He believes that high-tech jobs won’t go way, but the will be commoditized in the global market.

Smaller cellular towers – think femto/micro/pico cell – are a growing market for multiple chip architectures. New NPD In-Stat (www.in-stat.com) research forecasts that there will be 160.3 million active small cells, and the retail value of small cell shipments will reach $14 billion by 2015.

Remember the opening scene of the original TRON movie when the circuits on a chip transformed into highways and streets of a city? Kevin Flynn, the protagonist in the story, called that city the Grid.

The Grid. A digital frontier. I tried to picture clusters of information as they moved through the computer. What did they look like? Ships? motorcycles? Were the circuits like freeways? I kept dreaming of a world I thought I’d never see. And then, one day, I got in.

 Now image a softer version of the grid with rolling hills, valleys and shoreline. Then you’ll appreciate this cool picture of a gallium antimonide semiconductor wafer surface after the metal layer was peel-off. The picture received an honorable mention in the 2011 Nikon Small World Photomicrophotography Competition.

Would you bet $100,000 that quantum computing is impossible? That’s what an MIT associate professor is doing in a contrarian move to challenge skeptics of quantum computing. At stake may be the entire notion of quantum mechanics, as this professor explains in the comment portion of this story.

Why are videos so popular with the younger generation? Could the architecture of the working memory of the brain be one reason? Can these arrangement be duplicated by on-chip memory system in silicon? While these questions are answered by this research, it does provide a basis for exploration.

Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a new technique that allows graphics processing units (GPUs) and central processing units (CPUs) on a single chip to collaborate – boosting processor performance by an average of more than 20 percent.

This year’s DesignCon show focused more on board-level signal intregity and testing issue than on chip design and verification.

DesignCon has changed over the years. It started as a board-level interface show. In recent years, a large chip-level Electronic Design Automation (EDA) and verification component was added (see references for past coverage of the show). This year, the EDA tools component was greatly diminished as the show returned its roots, although with a much stronger emphasis on board-level testing, debug and signal-power integrity issues.

As usual for an editor, I spent more time in meetings that actually walking the show floor. Still, there was plenty to catch my eye when I did wander onto the exhibition hall. Here is a brief summary of my meetings and show floor highlights from Designcon 2012.

Read the full story at “IP Insider“

At the recent AO Venture Summit,Silicon Valleyinvestors cautioned about changes to traditional investment funding models as the semiconductor market enters a cyclical downturn.

At the 2012 World Economic Forum held atDavos,Switzerland, financial leaders from around the world worry about the future of capitalism. As wealth disparity and the thread of a global recession stalks the planet, few would argue that fundamental financial changes are taking place.

One bright spot in the economic gloom is the semiconductor industry, which has experienced strong growth in recent years. But this is an industry prone to cycles that are tied closely to enterprise and consumer consumption, were the former seeks production efficiencies while the latter seeks social connectivity.

Reports suggest that this bright spot will dim slightly as the semiconductor industry enters a down cycle.  Earlier this month, speakers at the SEMI Industry Strategy Symposium (ISS) trade show predicted a chip downturn in 2013. Global foundry giant TSMC pegs the slowdown closer to 2012.

How will these changes affect the flow of investment dollars into Silicon Valley, the center of innovation for the semiconductor market? A recent panel at the AlwaysOn Venture Summit suggests that fundamental changes to the investment funding model may have a greater affect than the ongoing global financial crisis.

Venture Capital Business Outlook 2012 panel at AO Venture Summit.

What follows is a portion of a panel on the venture capital business outlook for 2012.  The host was Packy Kelly, Partner and Co-Head, US Venture Capital Practice at KPMG. Panelists included Ann Winblad, Co-founder & Managing Director at Hummer Winblad; Rob Chaplinsky, Managing Director at Bridgescale; and Paul Matteucci, General Partner at USVP.

The moderator, Packy Kelly from KPMG, started the discussion by observing that the 2011 venture capital industry was disrupted by over-funding in both the Angel and Late-Stage venture investment rounds. Lower amounts were being raised by VC firms than were being invested. He asked the panelist for their thoughts on the shape of the competitive landscape for venture capital investing in 2012.

First to answer was Ann Winblad from Hummer Winblad. She began by stating that her clients were unlimited investors that were used to longer investment cycles. To date, most venture funds try to get completed in a 10 year cycle, with a company going public after 6 years. Today things are different. She wondered if unlimited partners had the endurance to go for a longer investment cycle.

There have been many expansions and contracts of this cycle over the years. “The expansion in the 1990’s was as scary as the contractions,” said Winblad. Still, the asset class is performing well. Today, most companies don’t have an IPO exit strategy. Instead, they are looking for acquisitions. Winbald explained that she had 6 companies acquired in last year – something that hadn’t’ been anticipated. But it was good news for the venture industry. Business as usual is now over a longer period of time.

Next to comment was Paul Matteucci from USVP. He agreed that the investment cycle was taking much longer times to equity, which meant that patience and staying power are critical. Since his focus was IT, he was excited about the growth of device location technology over next 5 years. “Lots of investment will be driven by these trends, including in the medical market,” explained Matteucci.

Another growth market for location technology would be agriculture. The problem with that market was knowing when to start. You don’t want to start too soon or you’ll lose, said Matteucci, adding that the agriculture market looks like the IT industry in the 1970s.

Finishing this first round of questions was Rob Chaplinsky from Bridgescale. He felt that the current trend of investment money pouring into deals but not funds was unsustainable. A new type of venture capital approach was needed, perhaps with a greater emphasis on startup incubators. “Now, I’m not so skeptical on incubators,” said Chaplinsky. His firm had 40 companies working as incubators, most doing software programming. The average age in the incubator coders was 23-24 year olds. These people are fearless and full of energy, believing they were geniuses and with little patience for non-programmers, he observed. The challenge for VCs with these types was to develop trust early on.

On the business side of things, Chaplinsky felt that his clients see greater risk in Series A and B stages of investment. Most of them want later stage deals, further into actual product deployment. This was one sign that the VC market is going through massive changes.

Related subjects:

• EDA Inflections on Technology Innovations