Author's Latest Posts


AI/ML’s Role In ADAS


Self-driving cars are headed this way, but not for a while. And that’s not a bad thing. As I discuss in my article, “Where Should Auto Sensor Data Be Processed?” there is still much to be worked out just on the technology side, such as how and where to process the significant amount of data coming into the vehicle from the outside world. [caption id="attachment_24152605" align="al... » read more

Hybrid Emulation Takes Center Stage


From mobile to networking to AI applications, system complexity shows no sign of slowing. These designs, which may contain multiple billion gates, must be validated, verified and tested, and it’s no longer possible to just throw the whole thing in a hardware emulator. For some time, emulation, FPGA-based prototyping, and virtual environments such as simulators have given design and verific... » read more

Partitioning Drives Architectural Considerations


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss partitioning with Raymond Nijssen, vice president of system engineering at Achronix; Andy Ladd, CEO at Baum; Dave Kelf, chief marketing officer at Breker; Rod Metcalfe, product management group director in the Digital & Signoff Group at Cadence; Mark Olen, product marketing group manager at Mentor, a Siemens Business; Tom Anderson, technical mar... » read more

Low-Power Design Becomes Even More Complex


Throughout the SoC design flow, there has been a tremendous amount of research done to ease the pain of managing a long list of power-related issues. And while headway has been made, the addition of new application areas such as AI/ML/DL, automotive and IoT has raised as many new problems as have been solved. The challenges are particularly acute at leading-edge nodes where devices are power... » read more

Debate Over Health Of Moore’s Law Continues


Semicon West 2019 was kicked off by the ‘AI Design Forum’ and featured a panel of CEOs that debated if Moore’s Law was still making power, performance and area optimization possible in the same way as it had been. Synopsys chairman and co-CEO Aart de Geus asserted that Moore’s Law is completely alive. “The discussion of Moore's Laws invariably goes back to the ‘65 document, and t... » read more

HW/SW Design At The Intelligent Edge


Adding intelligence to the edge is a lot more difficult than it might first appear, because it requires an understanding of what gets processed where based on assumptions about what the edge actually will look like over time. What exactly falls under the heading of Intelligent Edge varies from one person to the next, but all agree it goes well beyond yesterday’s simple sensor-based IoT dev... » read more

How To Automate Functional Safety


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss functional safety thinking, techniques and approaches to automation with Mike Stellfox, Fellow at Cadence; Bryan Ramirez, strategic marketing manager at Mentor, a Siemens Business; Jörg Grosse, product manager for functional safety at OneSpin Solutions; and Marc Serughetti, senior director of product marketing for automotive verification solutions ... » read more

Test Chips Play Larger Role At Advanced Nodes


Test chips are becoming more widespread and more complex at advanced process nodes as design teams utilize early silicon to diagnose problems prior to production. But this approach also is spurring questions about whether this approach is viable at 7nm and 5nm, due to the rising cost of prototyping advanced technology, such as mask tooling and wafer costs. Semiconductor designers have long b... » read more

Telle Whitney Receives IEEE Honorary Membership


On May 17 Telle Whitney received the 2019 IEEE Honorary Membership at the 2019 IEEE Vision, Innovation, and Challenges Summit (IEEE VIC Summit) in San Diego for leadership in supporting and promoting women in technology, and for building a highly impactful global organization dedicated to this purpose. Sponsored by IEEE, the grade of Honorary Member is a significant honor bestowed by IEEE a... » read more

Wrestling With High-Speed SerDes


SerDes has emerged as the primary solution in chips where there is a need for fast data movement and limited I/O, but this technology is becoming significantly more challenging to work with as speeds continue to rise to offset the massive increase in data. A Serializer/Deserializer is used to convert parallel data into serial data, allowing designers to speed up data communication without h... » read more

← Older posts Newer posts →