Chip Industry Week In Review


By Susan Rambo, Karen Heyman, and Liz Allan. Renesas plans to acquire Altium, maker of PCB design software, for $5.9 billion. In a conference call, Renesas CEO Hidetoshi Shibata cited Altium's PCB design software and digital twin virtual modeling as key components of its future strategy. "I believe it will generate transformational value for our combined customers and our stakeholders," Shib... » read more

Blog Review: Feb. 14


Siemens’ Dilan Heredia and Karen Chow explain why fast, accurate parasitic extraction (PEX) is essential to design success, especially for the 3 nm node and GAAFETs. Synopsys’ Srinivas Velivala debunks the myth that layout-versus-schematic (LVS) checking is a static step in the chip development process, and details its evolving role in modern SoCs. Cadence’s Mark Seymour digs into a... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


By Jesse Allen, Linda Christensen, and Liz Allan.  The Biden administration plans to invest more than $5B  for semiconductor R&D and workforce support, including in the National Semiconductor Technology Center (NSTC), as part of the rollout of the CHIPS Act. Today's announcement included at least hundreds of millions for the NSTC workforce efforts, including creating a Workforce Cente... » read more

Blog Review: Feb. 7


Synopsys' Ian Land, Kenneth Larsen, and Rob Aitken find that a new approach will be required to ensure that higher volume 3D heterogeneous integration (3DHI) designs can function reliably and successfully in aerospace, defense, and government systems. Siemens' John Golding provides a primer on the fundamental concepts related to signal integrity, including key topics such as transmission lin... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


By Jesse Allen, Gregory Haley, and Liz Allan. Cadence introduced an AI-based thermal stress and analysis platform aimed at 2.5D and 3D-ICs, and cooling for PCBs and electronic assemblies. The company also debuted a HW/SW accelerated digital twin solution for multi-physics system design and analysis, combining GPU-resident computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solvers with dedicated GPU hardwar... » read more

Blog Review: Jan. 31


Synopsys' William Ruby argues for a comprehensive energy-efficient design methodology for automotive ICs as today's vehicles demand ever more computing power to support electrification, communication, and processing of massive amounts of data. Cadence's Mellacheruvu Srikanth finds that verifying all the new features and enhancements across several generations of PCIe while maintaining backwa... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


By Jesse Allen, Karen Heyman, and Susan Rambo UMC and Intel will collaborate on the development of a 12nm semiconductor process platform to address high-growth markets, such as mobile, communications infrastructure, and networking. Apple reportedly pushed back the launch date of its long-awaited electric vehicle and scaled back the self-driving features to L2 driver assistance, according ... » read more

Blog Review: Jan. 24


Siemens' John McMillan finds that while 3D-IC capabilities are ready for mainstream, mass adoption success depends on how easily, effectively, and efficiently a solution can be delivered and points to five workflow adoption focus areas. Cadence's Andre Baguenie shows how to easily convert a logic signal to an electrical value using Verilog-AMS and the transition filter. Synopsys' Chris Cl... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


By Jesse Allen, Gregory Haley, and Liz Allan Synopsys will acquire Ansys for about $35 billion in cash and stock. The deal will boost Synopsys' multi-physics simulation capabilities, which are essential for complex 3D-IC designs, where thermal density can have significant repercussions. The acquisition is expected to be finalized in the first half of 2025. Worldwide semiconductor revenue ... » read more

How Is The Chip Industry Really Doing?


Throughout 2023, the general consensus among chip industry watchers was that IC sales were flat to down, fueled by market saturation for smart phones and PCs and excess inventory and capacity in DRAM and flash. But that doesn't tell the whole story, which is becoming highly nuanced and complicated. Unlike in the past, understanding how the chip industry is faring is no longer a simple math f... » read more

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