Author's Latest Posts


Using Memory Differently


Chip architects are beginning to rewrite the rules on how to choose, configure and use different types of memory, particularly for chips with AI and some advanced SoCs. Chipmakers now have a number of options and tradeoffs to consider when choosing memories, based on factors such as the application and the characteristics of the memory workload, because different memory types work better tha... » read more

Power Issues Rising For New Applications


Managing power in chips is becoming more difficult across a wide range of applications and process nodes, forcing chipmakers and systems companies to rethink their power strategies and address problems much earlier than in the past. While power has long been a major focus in the mobile space, power-related issues now are spreading well beyond phones and laptop computers. There are several re... » read more

Process Variation And Aging


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss design reliability and circuit aging with João Geada, chief technologist for the semiconductor business unit at ANSYS; Hany Elhak, product management director, simulation and characterization in the custom IC and PCB group at Cadence; Christoph Sohrmann, advanced physical verification at Fraunhofer EAS; and Naseer Khan, vice president of sales at M... » read more

IoT Device Security Makes Slow Progress


Semiconductor Engineering sat down with Chris Jones, vice president of marketing at Codasip; Martin Croome, vice president of business development at GreenWaves Technologies; Kevin McDermott, vice president of marketing at Imperas; Scot Morrison, general manager, embedded platform technology at Mentor, a Siemens Business; Lauri Koskinen, CTO at Minima; and Mike Borza, principal security technol... » read more

Using Software Approaches In Hardware Verification


Agile methodologies, created to improve quality in software code, increasingly are being applied to hardware verification. This is less of a drastic shift than it might first appear. Developing a verification testbench is largely software, and similar methodologies can be used for reducing bugs in hardware. “A testbench is nothing more than a big software project, and it makes perfect s... » read more

Debug Tops Verification Tasks


Verification engineers are spending an increased percentage of their time in debug — 44%, according to a recent survey by the Wilson Research Group. There are a variety or reasons for this, including the fact that some SoCs are composed of hundreds of internally developed and externally purchased IP blocks and subsystems. New system architectures contribute to the mix, some of which are be... » read more

More Than A Core


Gajinder Pandesar, CTO of UltraSoC, talks with Semiconductor Engineering about why heterogeneous design is changing the starting point for chip design, and why integration is now the real challenge rather than the processor core. https://youtu.be/y0rzopp5HDI » read more

Designing For Ultra-Low-Power IoT Devices


Optimizing designs for power is becoming the top design challenge in battery-driven IoT devices, boxed in by a combination of requirements such as low cost, minimum performance and functionality, as well as the need for at least some of the circuits to be always on. Power optimization is growing even more complicated as AI inferencing moves from the data center to the edge. Even simple... » read more

Impacts Of Reliability On Power And Performance


Making sure a complex system performs as planned, and providing proper access to memories, requires a series of delicate tradeoffs that often were ignored in the past. But with performance improvements increasingly tied to architectures and microarchitectures, rather than just scaling to the next node, approaches such as determinism and different kinds of caching increasingly are becoming criti... » read more

Autonomous Vehicle Design Begins To Change Direction


Tools that are commonly used in semiconductor design are starting to be applied at the system level for assisted and autonomous vehicles, setting the stage for more complex simulated scenarios and electronic system design. Simulation is well understood for designing automotive ICs, but now it also is being used to design vehicle architectures and sensors, as well as for sensor miniaturizatio... » read more

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