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Brian Bailey

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Brian Bailey is Technology Editor/EDA for Semiconductor Engineering.

Author's Latest Posts

Why RISC-V Is Succeeding
By Brian Bailey - 24 Feb, 2022 - Comments: 5

There is no disputing the excitement surround the introduction of the RISC-V processor architecture. Yet while many have called it a harbinger of a much broader open-source hardware movement, the reasons behind its success are not obvious, and the implications for an expansion of more open-source cores is far from certain. “The adoption of RISC-V as the preferred architecture for many sili... » read more

Unintended Coupling Issues Grow
By Brian Bailey - 24 Feb, 2022 - Comments: 0

The number of indirect and often unexpected ways in which one design element may be affected by another is growing, making it more difficult to ensure a chip — or multiple chips in a package — will perform reliably. Long gone are the days when the only way that one part of a circuit could influence another was by an intended wire connecting them. As geometries get smaller, frequencies go... » read more

Does EDA Sell Fear?
By Brian Bailey - 24 Feb, 2022 - Comments: 3

I worked in the EDA industry for over 30 years and a common lament I heard was that the EDA industry survived by selling fear. Your new chip will fail if you do not buy the latest tool offering. There always seemed to be a natural dislike for the EDA industry and many users thought the industry overcharged and was unable to innovate. I never quite understood the reasoning. A recent comment, ... » read more

Spreadsheets: Still Valuable, But More Limited
By Brian Bailey - 10 Feb, 2022 - Comments: 1

Spreadsheets have been an invaluable engineering tool for many aspects of semiconductor design and verification, but their inability to handle complexity is squeezing them out of an increasing number of applications. This is raising questions about whether they still have a role, and if so, how large that role will be. There are two sides to this issue. On one side are the users who see them... » read more

Growth Spurred By Negatives
By Brian Bailey - 27 Jan, 2022 - Comments: 0

The success and health of the semiconductor industry is driven by the insatiable appetite for increasingly complex devices that impact every aspect of our lives. The number of design starts for the chips used in those devices drives the EDA industry. But at no point in history have there been as many market segments driving innovation as there are today. Moreover, there is no indication this... » read more

Ethical Coverage
By Brian Bailey - 27 Jan, 2022 - Comments: 1

How many times have you heard statements such as, "The verification task quadruples when the design size doubles?" The implication is that every register bit that is created has doubled the state space of the design. It gives the impression that complete verification is hopeless, and because of that little progress has been made in coming up with real coverage metrics. When constrained rando... » read more

Greener Design Verification
By Brian Bailey - 27 Jan, 2022 - Comments: 0

Chip designs are optimized for lower cost, better performance, or lower power. The same cannot be said about verification, where today very little effort is spent on reducing execution cost, run time, or power consumption. Admittedly, one is a per unit cost while the other is a development cost, but could the industry be doing more to make development greener? It can take days for regression... » read more

A Minimal RISC-V
By Brian Bailey - 13 Jan, 2022 - Comments: 8

Microcontrollers exist in almost everything, but can RISC-V satisfy the needs of this market? Is it small enough to replace 8-bit processors? What might help people migrate to a more modern processor architecture? RISC-V defines a 32-bit processor instruction set architecture (ISA) that is open source and free to be implemented in any number of ways. It is touted for being a very small and e... » read more

Is Programmable Overhead Worth The Cost?
By Brian Bailey - 13 Jan, 2022 - Comments: 0

Programmability has fueled the growth of most semiconductor products, but how much does it actually cost? And is that cost worth it? The answer is more complicated than a simple efficiency formula. It can vary by application, by maturity of technology in a particular market, and in the context of much larger systems. What's considered important for one design may be very different for anothe... » read more

Industry Transforming In Ways Previously Unimaginable
By Brian Bailey - 30 Dec, 2021 - Comments: 0

Early in the year, everyone expected that the availability of COVID vaccines would signal the start of a return to normal, but that has certainly not been the case. Now the industry is taking a longer-term view about how to transform business, what is necessary for people to maintain their mental health, and how to create robust hybrid work environments for the future that do not discard the po... » read more

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