The Power Game


By Ann Steffora Mutschler Semiconductor engineering teams always have focused on stepping up performance in new designs, but in the mobile, GPU and tablet markets they’re finding that maintaining the balance between higher performance and the same or lower power is increasingly onerous. The reason: Extreme gaming applications can create scenario files that cause dynamic power consumpt... » read more

Leakage Optimization


By Arvind Narayanan For consumer electronics such as cell phones, tablets, and laptops, long battery life is a key requirement. Battery life is directly related to total power consumption—which is a function of switching activity, capacitance, and voltage—across all operational modes. In full active mode on a cell phone, for example, the dynamic power that comes from signal switching is hi... » read more

Rounding Up Design Corners


By Pallab Chatterjee With advanced process development occupying the 32nm to 22nm corridor, production SoC and ASIC designs are being built at the 180nm to 45nm nodes. In these processes, the designer has to contend with cross-wafer variation and non-correlated design corners, as well as multiple operation states. This is referred to as multi-corner multi-mode (MCMM) and variation analysis. ... » read more