Author's Latest Posts


Divide And Conquer: A Power Verification Methodology Approach


It’s no secret that the power verification challenge has grown by leaps and bounds in the recent past, especially considering design complexity and the sharp rise in the number of power domains in an SoC. As a result, SoC teams want to apply a rigorous [getkc id="10" kc_name="Verification"] flow, observed Gabriel Chidolue, verification technologist at [getentity id="22017" e_name="Mentor G... » read more

Speeding Up Analog


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss analog design and how to speed it up with Kurt Shuler, vice president of marketing at Arteris; Bernard Murphy, CTO at Atrenta; Wilbur Luo, senior group director, product management for custom IC and PCB at Cadence; Brad Hoskins, director, IC design, microcontrollers at Freescale; and Jeff Miller, product manager at Tanner EDA. What follows are excer... » read more

Verification Quality Comes Into Focus


Across the board, when I talk with people about power management verification or any verification actually, the topic of quality always comes up. The first plan of attack is to look at coverage: how it is managed, how to perform coverage in a more constructed way. Ellie Burns at Mentor Graphics mentioned that because UPF can define all of the states of the system, the states of the power man... » read more

System Bits: July 7


Faster lasers for better memory To visualize in four dimensions the changing atomic configurations of materials undergoing phase changes — which happens when data is recorded on DVDs and Blu-ray disks — Caltech researchers have adopted a novel technique called ultrafast electron crystallography (UEC) that uses ultrafast laser pulses that speed up the data recording process. Interestingl... » read more

The Patent Aspect Of IoT


Wearing objects on the body that perform a function is, of course, nothing new — but the level of sophistication has exploded in the recent past. Along with this is the number of patent applications that have been filed in order to corner some aspect of the market that could be worth as much as tens of billions of dollars in five years. To note: 41,301 patents have been published on wearab... » read more

GF Closes On IBM Chip Business Purchase


By Ann Steffora Mutschler, Ed Sperling and Mark LaPedus GlobalFoundries completed its acquisition of IBM's Microelectronics Group today, creating a behemoth that is expected to extend well beyond the combined footprint of the existing companies. To begin with, GlobalFoundries will get two additional fabs, one of which makes RF SOI chips. But while IBM was hesitant to expand that business ... » read more

System Bits: June 30


Implantable drug-delivery chip An implantable, microchip-based device developed by MIT spinout Microchips Biotech may soon replace the injections and pills now needed to treat chronic diseases. The company partnered with Teva Pharmaceutical to commercialize its wirelessly controlled, implantable, microchip-based devices that store and release drugs inside the body over many years. [caption id... » read more

What Is A System Now?


Defining a system used to be relatively straightforward. But as systems move onto chips, and as those chips increasingly are connected with applications and security spanning multiple devices, the definition is changing. This increases the complexity of the design process itself, and it raises questions about how chips and software will be designed and defined in the age of the [getkc id="76... » 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

System Bits: June 23


Magnifying motions indiscernible to the naked eye For several years now, the research groups of MIT professors of computer science and engineering William Freeman and Frédo Durand have been investigating techniques for amplifying movements captured by video but indiscernible to the human eye. Versions of their algorithms can make the human pulse visible and even recover intelligible speech fr... » read more

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