February 2012 - Page 3 of 4 - Semiconductor Engineering

AL2012 – A Prologue
By Chris Mack - 12 Feb, 2012 - Comments: 0

Yesterday I found my way to San Jose (a more arduous journey than in the past, since all direct flights from Austin to San Jose have disappeared like civility in American politics).  Another SPIE Advanced Lithography Conference is about to begin.  As usual, I will blog each day from my vantage as an overwhelmed conference participant.  And also as usual, I will set the stage for what I think... » read more

Power Forces Changes In Portable Audio Design
By Ed Sperling - 09 Feb, 2012 - Comments: 0

By Pallab Chatterjee Power is becoming an overriding issue in the analog world, and nowhere was this more apparent than at the recent NAMM show. The annual show, which is run by the National Association of Music Merchants, featured mostly iOS applications and higher-performance hardware plug-ins, although Android development is starting show up. The recent releases of Android support the ... » read more

Mechanical Meets Electrical
By Ed Sperling - 09 Feb, 2012 - Comments: 0

By Ed Sperling For the first part of the 20th century mechanical engineering dominated almost everything in technology. For the second half, once the transistor and the integrated circuit became well entrenched, those two disciplines largely divided up the tech market. More recently, however, they are being forced to collaborate in teams that historically had nothing in common. While the co... » read more

Margin Of Error
By Ed Sperling - 09 Feb, 2012 - Comments: 0

By Ed Sperling Adding extra circuits and silicon area to a chip has always been frowned upon by chipmakers. Extra silicon means extra money, and for most chips the least expensive is always the better choice. But at advanced process nodes, margin also can slow performance, increase power consumption, and make it harder to achieve timing closure. The obvious solution is to reduce margin thro... » read more

Step Away From the Spreadsheet
By Ed Sperling - 09 Feb, 2012 - Comments: 0

By Ann Steffora Mutschler Engineers today spend more than a quarter of their time trying to meet power specifications. A survey of more than 700 engineers by Calypto illustrates just how important and time-consuming power management is today for engineering teams. As consumer devices grow ever more complex, the need to deal with, analyze and optimize power at not just the RTL but at the sys... » read more

Processor Subject To Change
By Ed Sperling - 09 Feb, 2012 - Comments: 0

By Ann Steffora Mutschler With power complexity driving sophisticated management techniques, SoC design engineering teams are turning to a new class of customizable processor architectures from ARM, CEVA, NVIDIA, Qualcomm and Tensilica and others to take advantage of the best in power saving techniques. While these new architectures are novel approaches, the concepts are not especially new,... » read more

Experts At The Table: Low-Power Verification
By Ed Sperling - 09 Feb, 2012 - Comments: 0

Low-Power Engineering sat down to discuss the problems of identifying and verifying power issues with Barry Pangrle, solutions architect for low-power design at Mentor Graphics; Krishna Balachandran, director of low-power verification marketing at Synopsys; Kalar Rajendiran, senior director of marketing at eSilicon; Will Ruby, senior director of technical sales and support at Apache Design; and... » read more

A Smart System Technology Renaissance
By Margaret Schmitt - 09 Feb, 2012 - Comments: 0

By Margaret Schmitt Leonardo da Vinci invented fantastic machines to revolutionize how man would live, work, wage war, and travel. Describing how he conceived these designs he said, “A painter should begin every canvas with a wash of black, because all things in nature are dark except where exposed by the light.” We currently are experiencing a renaissance of our own, with the rise of s... » read more

Electronic Power And Thermal Management
By Various Writers - 09 Feb, 2012 - Comments: 0

Highly complex systems require integrating a large number of electrical components within a very limited space. This creates challenges for power and thermal management not seen in previous generations of electronic systems. To be successful, plans must incorporate advanced power and thermal management strategies from the earliest stages of the design process and assess power and thermal issues... » read more

Virtual LP
By Luke Lang - 09 Feb, 2012 - Comments: 0

By Luke Lang Several months ago, I introduced the concept of virtual domain in association with hierarchical CPF. It is a relatively simple concept with a concise definition. It is powerful and flexible in supporting large designs with complex power architecture and hierarchical power intent. However, to the UPF coders, virtual domain is sometimes a mystery. I hope this blog will clear up any ... » read more

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