June 2015 - Page 2 of 11 - Semiconductor Engineering


Wrong Verification Revolution Offered


SoC design traditionally has been an ad-hoc process, with implementation occurring at the register transfer level. This is where verification starts, and after the blocks have been verified, it becomes an iterative process of integration and verification that continues until the complete system has been assembled. But today, this methodology has at least two major problems, which were addres... » read more

Tear Down The Wall Between Front-End And Back-End Teams


As complexity of system-on-chip devices increases, it's becoming imperative for design teams and organizations to re-examine how they work with one another in order to improve productivity. One giant step in this direction is to bridge the divide between the front-end design process and the physical back-end design process. We often refer to this as a figurative “wall,” but there is real... » read more

Towards A Metric To Measure Verification Computing Efficiency


Thinking back about DAC 2015 in San Francisco earlier this month, I am happy that at least some of my predictions came true—there was clearly a trend towards making verification smarter. However, one thing struck me while hearing all the discussions on connecting engines is what Jim Hogan called the continuum of verification engines (COVE)—and what we at Cadence call the system development ... » read more

DoD Scratches Its Head Over Foundry Security


When the GlobalFoundries deal with IBM to acquire its foundries closes, as it is slated to sometime during 2015, the U.S. Department of Defense has a small problem on its hands. Military programs no longer will have access to a trusted fab to manufacture semiconductors. How do you ensure that the foundry did not modify or alter your design, add backdoor access or implement a remote control mech... » read more

Shift Left: Software Or Hardware?


A couple of weeks ago I was with a virtual prototyping user who described the benefits his company has seen from deploying virtual prototyping for early software development. The use of virtual prototyping has been rolled out progressively to more projects over the years, making it possible for the company to measure its impact on the software availability schedule and the impact has been drama... » read more

Big Data, Big Opportunities


For the last two decades I have spent a lot of my time managing operations and sales for several EDA startups, most of which were acquired. The focus of many of these companies was to provide solutions to optimize complex designs. We worked to enhance many of the top 25 semiconductor companies’ physical implementation flows using cutting edge technologies and methodologies to improve power, p... » read more

Asynchronous’ Impact On Tools


In the right situation, using asynchronous logic makes a lot of sense—especially for security and IoT. But moving into the asynchronous design involves making tradeoffs, figuring out how the technical requirements of an application will impact the design, and understanding the limits of EDA tools in this area. “It's going to be halfway between digital and analog support,” said Bernard ... » read more

Thermal Interface Materials: The Unknown Entity?


Thermal interface materials (TIMs) are becoming more important in all application areas and between different component parts. Any semiconductor, ranging from LEDs to high-power electronics, is becoming smaller, yet producing more power. In many ways the physical design limits have been reached for packaging, allowing entire components to have a total thermal resistance of less than 0.1 K/W. Ho... » read more

IP Integration Challenges Increase


Semiconductor Engineering sat down with Chris Rowen, CTO of [getentity id="22032" e_name="Cadence"]'s IP group; Rob Aitken, an [getentity id="22186" comment="ARM"] fellow; Patrick Soheili, vice president of product management and corporate development at [getentity id="22242" e_name="eSilicon"]; Navraj Nandra, senior director of marketing for DesignWare analog and mixed-signal IP at [getentity ... » read more

Is Your Automotive Software Robust Enough for Hardware Faults?


A look at how virtual prototyping is expanding its reach to improve development of safety critical systems and deal with the single most complex aspect of automotive systems: the embedded software. To read more, click here. » read more

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