Author's Latest Posts


Is EUV Making Progress?


By Ann Steffora Mutschler & Ed Sperling EUV has been promised for a couple of decades, counted on for at least three process nodes on the ITRS roadmap, and considered essential to chip manufacturing since 22nm. Billions of dollars have been invested in R&D, engineering teams from around the world have contributed to its development, and still serious problems persist. Just how close... » read more

Power Verification Now Required


Today’s verification tasks may seem daunting — and much of it is — but all of it is absolutely necessary to make sure chips operate properly with a larger system. Throw power into the mix and the challenges mount. The good news is that there is no shortage of tools and methodologies to help with these tasks. The bad news is that even the best tools won’t make the challenges disappear... » read more

Reducing The Risk Of Third Party IP Integration


It’s old news by now that integration of third party is on the rise. And as part of that, engineering teams are constantly trying to figure out how to reduce the risk of using something they’ve licensed from outside their group or company. There may exist a notion that third party IP is more plug and play than it actually is, and there is an increasing burden on the IP provider to ease the ... » read more

Managing Dynamic Power


Working with finFETs is a study in contrasts. While leakage is now under control for the first time in several process generations due to the advent of different gate technology, dynamic power density caused by tightly packed transistors and higher clock speeds has become the big issue. “FinFET technology helps with reducing static/leakage power so when your logic is not active, you can sh... » read more

System Bits: June 16


Origami robot At the recent International Conference on Robotics and Automation, MIT researchers presented a printable origami robot that folds itself up from a flat sheet of plastic when heated and measures about a centimeter from front to back. The robot weighs just a third of a gram, and can swim, climb an incline, traverse rough terrain, and carry a load twice its weight. Other than the... » read more

System Bits: June 9


Optical constraints Stanford University researchers have discovered strong constraints to optical data transmission but hope it can guide future research in this area. As a reminder, optics, a form of data transmission that utilizes beams of light, has the promise to outperform the beams of electrons that drive computers or smartphones. And as engineers have long looked for a way to miniatu... » read more

Synopsys To Buy Atrenta, Ansys To Acquire Gear


By Ann Mutschler & Ed Sperling As evidence of the continued consolidation in the EDA industry, Synopsys announced Sunday it would acquire privately held formal verification provider Atrenta, for an undisclosed sum. That was followed quickly by Ansys' announcement that it would buy data analytics firm Gear Design Solutions. From a strategic perspective, Synopsys co-CEO Aart de Geus said ... » read more

STEM And The IoT


By now, we’ve all heard how the IoT will deeply affect our industry and daily life. Market researchers at Yole Développement predict that In 2024, the IoT device market will represent a $45B business contributing to a total IoT market of $400B. This is going to demand many more engineering brains on the task, which is in direct contrast to something I heard on NPR recently about how some peo... » read more

System Bits: June 2


Subcutaneous medicine chip A biosensor chip developed at EPFL is capable of simultaneously monitoring the concentration of a number of molecules, such as glucose and cholesterol, and certain drugs. It’s only a centimeter long, placed under a patient’s skin, powered by a patch on the surface of the skin, and communicates with a mobile phone. [caption id="attachment_20134" align="alig... » read more

Emulation for Power


Solving power problems in today’s leading-edge SoCs requires not only the best architectural choices but advanced tools and techniques to determine the right path to take. This equates to a combination of hardware emulation and power analysis/optimization software tools. Design teams today must have real-life scenarios to accurately predict the power impact of their architectural decisions... » read more

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