Author's Latest Posts


Chip Security Features Abound…But Are They Enough?


There are a number of security features to protect devices today from attack that SoC design team can include, some of which extract only a small cost to the power and performance. A few of these include the following, according to Bernard Murphy, CTO at Atrenta: --Secure boot, which is a very common thing in embedded systems now in which there are trusted execution environments (TEE) to... » read more

Designing For Security


Some level of security is required in SoC today, whether it is in hardware, software or — most commonly — both. Of course, there is a price to pay from a power and performance perspective, but thankfully just a small one in most cases. The explosion of consumer devices has driven the need for increased security features in smart cards, smart phones, personal computers, home networks, and... » read more

IP Integration Challenges Rising


It’s not just [getkc id="80" comment="lithography"] that is putting a crimp in sub-28nm designs. As more functions, features, transistors and software are added onto chips, the pressure to get chips out the door has forced chipmakers to lean more heavily on third-party IP providers. Results, as you might expect, have been mixed. The number of blocks has mushroomed, creating its own web of ... » read more

High-Level Gaps Emerge


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss the attributes of a high-level, front-end design flow, and why it is needed at present with Leah Clark, associate technical director for digital video technology at Broadcom; Jon McDonald, technical marketing engineer at Mentor Graphics; Phil Bishop, vice president of the System Level Design System & Verification Group at Cadence; and Bernard Mu... » read more

System Bits: July 22


All graphene is not the same Widely touted as the most electrically conductive material ever studied, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania now understand that all graphene is not the same. With so few atoms comprising the entirety of the material, the arrangement of each one has an impact on its overall function. The team has used an advanced microscope to study the relationship be... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: July 22


Lasers to replace quartz in electronics? While nearly all electronics today require devices called oscillators that create precise frequencies, future high-end navigation systems, radar systems, and even possibly tomorrow's consumer electronics will require references beyond the performance of quartz, according to researchers at Caltech. In fact, these researchers have developed a method to... » read more

Where Do We Stand With CDC?


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss where the industry stands on clock domain crossing with Charlie Janac, CEO of Arteris; Shaker Sarwary, VP of Formal Verification Products at Atrenta; Pranav Ashar, CTO at Real Intent; and Namit Gupta, CAE, Verification Group at Synopsys. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: What are the biggest use models for CDC verification today... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: July 15


Improving battery performance with sand Researchers at the University of California, Riverside’s Bourns College of Engineering have created a lithium ion battery that outperforms the current industry standard by three times using sand as the key material. The researchers, who said this is a low cost, non-toxic, environmentally-friendly way to produce high performance lithium ion battery a... » read more

System Bits: July 15


Silicon oxide memories Thanks to a refinement that will allow manufacturers to fabricate devices at room temperature with conventional production methods, Rice University’s silicon oxide technology for high-density, next-generation computer memory is one step closer to mass production. Rice’s silicon oxide memories are a type of two-terminal, “resistive random-access memory” (RRAM) ... » read more

Raising The Abstraction Of Power: Trends


Given that design requirements for today’s SoCs go well beyond performance and area, energy efficiency and its impact on system design plays a major role for many end applications ranging from wireless sensor networks to autonomous vehicles as well as emerging applications in the Internet of Things market segment, where cooling capability is limited and expensive. For these reasons, a comp... » read more

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