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Brian Bailey

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Brian Bailey is Technology Editor/EDA for Semiconductor Engineering.

Author's Latest Posts

System State Challenges Widen
By Brian Bailey - 30 Nov, 2023 - Comments: 0

Knowing the state of a system is essential for many analysis and debug tasks, but it's becoming more difficult in heterogeneous systems that are crammed with an increasing array of features. There is a limit as to how many things engineers can keep track of, and the complexity of today's systems extends far beyond that. Hierarchy and abstraction are used to help focus on the important aspect... » read more

3D-ICs May Be The Least-Cost Option
By Brian Bailey - 30 Nov, 2023 - Comments: 1

When 2.5D and 3D packaging were first conceived, the general consensus was that only the largest semiconductor houses would be able to afford them, but development costs are quickly coming under control. In some cases, these advanced packages actually may turn out to be the lowest-cost options. With stacked die [1], each die is considered to be a complete functional block or sub-system. In t... » read more

An Entangled Heterarchy
By Brian Bailey - 09 Nov, 2023 - Comments: 1

For decades, a form of structural hierarchy has been the principal means of handling complexity in chip design. It's not always perfect, and there is no ideal way in which to divide and conquer because that would need to focus on the analysis being performed. In fact, most systems can be viewed from a variety of different hierarchies, equally correct, and together forming a heterarchy. The e... » read more

What Will That Chip Cost?
By Brian Bailey - 30 Oct, 2023 - Comments: 1

In the past, analysts, consultants, and many other experts attempted to estimate the cost of a new chip implemented in the latest process technology. They concluded that by the 3nm node, only a few companies would be able to afford them — and by the time they got into the angstrom range, probably nobody would. Much has changed over the past few process nodes. Increasing numbers of startups... » read more

The Limits Of AI-Generated Models
By Brian Bailey - 26 Oct, 2023 - Comments: 2

In several recent stories, the subject of models has come up, and one recurrent theme is that AI may be able to help us generate models of a required abstraction. While this may be true in some cases, it is very dangerous in others. If we generalize, AI should be good for any model where the results are predominantly continuous, but discontinuities create problems. Unless those are found and... » read more

Anatomy Of A System Simulation
By Brian Bailey - 26 Oct, 2023 - Comments: 0

The semiconductor industry has greatly simplified analysis by consolidating around a small number of models and abstractions, but that capability is breaking down both at the implementation level and at the system level. Today, the biggest pressure is coming from the systems industry, where the electronic content is a small fraction of what must be integrated together. Systems companies tend... » read more

RISC-V Wants All Your Cores
By Brian Bailey - 12 Oct, 2023 - Comments: 0

RISC-V is no longer content to disrupt the CPU industry. It is waging war against every type of processor integrated into an SoC or advanced package, an ambitious plan that will face stiff competition from entrenched players with deep-pocketed R&D operations and their well-constructed ecosystems. When Calista Redmond, CEO for RISC-V International, said at last year's summit that RISC-V w... » read more

The Federation Needs A Taxonomy
By Brian Bailey - 28 Sep, 2023 - Comments: 0

While putting together the story about federated simulation, it brought back memories of an earlier part of my career when I spent a lot of time looking at modeling abstractions and simulation frameworks. In the mid-1990s, the notions of re-using pre-designed blocks of IP started to become popular, but the fledgling industry was in disarray. Every IP block had a different set of deliverables... » read more

Industry Pressure Grows For Simulating Systems Of Systems
By Brian Bailey - 28 Sep, 2023 - Comments: 0

Most complex systems are designed in a top-down manner, but as the amount of electronic content in those systems increases, so does the pressure on the chip industry to provide high-level models and simulation capabilities. Those models either do not exist today, or they exist in isolation. No matter how capable a model or simulator, there never will be one that can do it all. In some cases,... » read more

What Happened To Portable Stimulus?
By Brian Bailey - 28 Sep, 2023 - Comments: 0

In June 2018, Accellera released the initial version of the Portable Test and Stimulus Standard (PSS), a new verification language that was slated to be the first new abstraction defined within EDA for a couple of decades. So what happened to it? Apart from a few updates at DVCon, there appears to be little talk about it today. However, the industry has its head down trying to make it work, ... » read more

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