As many of you know Bitcoin prices have surged recently up to $40,000 USD per bitcoin as of February 2021. We are in the middle of a bit rush! People are noticing Bitcoin’s surge and wondering how they can profit from it. …

Since I’ve been on both sides of the table when it comes to buying/prospecting or selling/pitching silicon components, I want to put down some thoughts about how things work out timing and process wise such that the buyer is most receptive to the pitch. Some key steps are: Understand the…

All system custom silicon projects where the silicon is not designed and manufactured in-house require at least two companies to directly interface with each other: the system company and the silicon supplier company. Each one of these two companies has other companies that interact with them. Typically, the system company…

It’s quite common for system companies to want to work with brand names whenever they start playing with the idea of a custom silicon program. Like the old adage says: “no one ever got fired for choosing IBM”. And it’s not a bad deal for some system companies to go…

Verification is a field that has emerged as its own discipline, no longer being relegated to an activity led by the design team, and to which time is allocated as long as it doesn’t get in the way of designing. Chip companies that want to have predictable product release cycles…

Every so often a custom silicon socket comes up at a system company that you simply cannot afford to lose. These are the types of custom silicon sockets that last for generations of a product, in huge and predictable volumes, and for whatever reason they may become available. …

I will address this topic with two blog posts: validation (i.e. post silicon) — Part 1, and verification (pre-silicon) — Part 2. In this blog post, I will focus on validation. One of the upsides of using catalog chips that have been in the market for a long time and…

Custom silicon can be the right solution for your system for a lot of different reasons, but whatever they may be in your case, there are some basic steps that should always be taken to start on the path towards a successful custom silicon project. Here are five basic steps: …

In this video, I explain the system custom silicon development process focusing only on the schedule interactions and phases of the process. In the highly competitive electronics market, top electronics companies choose to develop custom silicon internally and with supplier partnerships to obtain substantial benefits in performance, size, IP protection…