u/JohniBGood

I'm highly skeptical of the marketing noise around this. Are people actually putting these IPs into production, or are they just glorified ring oscillators?

A few questions for anyone familiar with silicon telemtry:

-Is there a specific class of monitor IP that handles this without a massive area overhead? Can it actually differentiate between global process variation and localized aging in-situ?

-If we are pulling telemetry from thousands of points across a die, where is this data actually being stored? processed?

-Is this something that's going to become a requirement for high-rel automotive/datacenter, or are we just being sold early-adoption vendor hype?

 

I'm 20 years in DFT and silicon bring-up, and my philosophy has always been pretty straightforward: run rigorous ATPG, characterize the hell out of the first silicon, set a sane Vmin guardband based on HTOL, ship the product, and sleep well. Got a task from management to look into other ways to deal with reliability without increasing guard bands. 

 

Thank you.

I'm highly skeptical of the marketing noise around this. Are people actually putting these IPs into production, or are they just glorified ring oscillators?
A few questions for anyone familiar with silicon telemtry:
-Is there a specific class of monitor IP that handles this without a massive area overhead? Can it actually differentiate between global process variation and localized aging in-situ?
-If we are pulling telemetry from thousands of points across a die, where is this data actually being stored? processed?
-Is this something that's going to become a requirement for high-rel automotive/datacenter, or are we just being sold early-adoption vendor hype?

 

About me: 20 years in DFT and silicon bring-up, and my philosophy has always been pretty straightforward: run rigorous ATPG, characterize the hell out of the first silicon, set a sane Vmin guardband based on HTOL, ship the product, and sleep well. Got a task from management to look into other ways to deal with reliability without increasing guard bands. 

 

Thank you.

It seemed that for most of the tech scene, SW engineers were a lot more common and in demand throughout the years, and they on avg. earned more than HW\ELC engineers.

But this trend seems to reverse, and I believe it's because of two things:

1. A lot of companies are making more money, with higher margins, on chips and systems, due to increasing demand caused by surge of AI and the infrastructure it requires.

2. AI is really good at writing code, and 'replaces' a lot of SW engineers, especially in the junior levels, reducing demand for additional developers.

WDYT? Do you see the same around you?

+25% so far today, seems to jump after earnings and motion across multiple countries worldwide. I read a bit of stories from their customers and despite being rather complex tool, it is very effective and saves lives.

AI Summary below:

• Revenue Beat: $174.1M (up 12% YoY) vs. ~$167.9M expected.
• Raised Guidance: Upped 2026 revenue expectations to $690M - $710M.
• Pipeline & Approvals: Growth is being driven internationally (France, Germany) and by their recent FDA approval of Optune Pax for pancreatic cancer, plus positive Phase 3 data in brain metastases. Gross margins also ticked up to 78%.

The Bear Case:

• EPS Miss: They posted a loss of -$0.62 per share (missed estimates of -$0.40).
• Cash Burn: Net loss more than doubled to $71.1M. Management attributes a lot of this to a $43M non-cash share-based compensation expense triggered by the Optune Pax FDA approval, plus higher operating expenses from new indication launches.

I've never seen this before. The top 15 companies in last 24h market cap gain are al semi\semi-related companies. It shows a market where capital is aggressively flowing into every layer of the advanced computing supply chain. Foundries, chip designers, and even semiconductor equipment manufacturers are seeing massive gains. The chart reflects a heavily concentrated tech rally where the market focuses more on the infrastructure builders of the AI boom rather than the companies deploying it.

https://preview.redd.it/gpekj4gb4qxg1.png?width=971&format=png&auto=webp&s=d751b99f948febe74116e419acefdac9d8647b96