Question

Asked 23rd Apr, 2013

Indian Institute of Technology Delhi

In an 8-bit current steering DAC how many bits should be converted using thermometer-DAC and how many using binary?

a few MSB bits are coded in thermometer fashion to reduce glitches.LSB bits are coded in binary weighted fashion.

Not sure, for 12 bit DAC which we did, 4 MSB is using thermometer DAC and 8 bit we used binary weighted. I believe if this is about the glitch a summary of circuit technique is here

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/256441671_Recent_Technique_in_Reducing_Glitch_in_Current_Steering_Digital_to_Analog_Converter__A_Mini_Review_%28Unpublished_2010%29

Article Recent Technique in Reducing Glitch in Current Steering Digi...

Cite

Cyril Mechkov

Technical University of Sofia

Abdelhalim abdelnaby Zekry

Ain Shams University

Amit Das

Jawaharlal Nehru University

Lutz von Wangenheim

Hochschule Bremen

Glen Ellis

The University of Tennessee Health Science Center

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What are the extra libraries required in Cadence Virtuoso?

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Asked 30th Aug, 2014

Sandeep Mishra

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How do you calculate dynamic power consumption using cadence virtuoso?

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Asked 13th Sep, 2014

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Is MOORE's LAW a "self-fulfilling prophecy" and a "convenient fiction"?

Question

11 answers

Asked 22nd May, 2021

Ali Zeki

"Self-fulfilling prophecy" is Moore's own definition, while "a convenient fiction" is somebody else's...

I have decided that, giving some excerpts from two relevant articles will be more helpful than trying to explain my personal views in detail.

A.Z.

Excerpts from the article "Was Moore’s Law Inevitable?" by Kevin Kelly:

https://kk.org/thetechnium/was-moores-law/

(...) Writing in 2005, (...) Moore says, “Moore’s Law is really about economics.” [Moore's colleague] Carver Mead made it clearer yet: Moore’s Law, he says, “is really about people’s belief system, it’s not a law of physics, it’s about human belief, and when people believe in something, they’ll put energy behind it to make it come to pass.”

(...) Finally, in a another reference, Mead adds : “Permission to believe that [the Law] will keep going,” is what keeps the Law going. Moore agrees in a 1996 article: “More than anything, once something like this gets established, it becomes more or less a self-fulfilling prophecy. The Semiconductor Industry Association puts out a technology road map, which continues this [generational improvement] every three years. Everyone in the industry recognizes that if you don’t stay on essentially that curve they will fall behind. So it sort of drives itself.”

(...) Andrew Odlyzko from AT&T Bell Laboratories concurs: “Management is *not* telling a researcher, ‘You are the best we could find, here are the tools, please go off and find something that will let us leapfrog the competition.’ Instead, the attitude is, ‘Either you and your 999 colleagues double the performance of our microprocessors in the next 18 months, to keep up with the competition, or you are fired.'”

Excerpts from the article "A Moore’s Law Mystery" by Rose Eveleth:

https://www.lastwordonnothing.com/2015/10/30/a-moores-law-mystery/

(...) Moore’s Law probably didn’t start as a marketing ploy. Even Carlson will admit that. But it then became, what he called, “a convenient fiction.”

Thomas Haigh, a historian of technology at the University of Wisconsin, had a similar idea. “[Moore’s Law] has always been more of a self-promotion for the wondrous accomplishments of the semiconductor industry than a law of nature,” (...) “It’s also been a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy, since it’s taken ever larger investments of research and development money to keep it coming true."