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Brian Bailey

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Brian Bailey is Technology Editor/EDA for Semiconductor Engineering.

Author's Latest Posts

The Next Big Leap: Energy Optimization
By Brian Bailey - 16 Nov, 2020 - Comments: 1

The relationship between power and energy is technically simple, but its implication on the EDA flow is enormous. There are no tools or flows today that allow you to analyze, implement, and optimize a design for energy consumption, and getting to that point will require a paradigm shift within the semiconductor industry. The industry talks a lot about power, and power may have become a more ... » read more

Designs Beyond The Reticle Limit
By Brian Bailey - 12 Nov, 2020 - Comments: 0

Designs continue to grow in size and complexity, but today they are reaching both physical and economic challenges. These challenges are causing a reversal of the integration trend that has provided much of the performance and power gains over the past couple of decades. The industry, far from giving up, is exploring new ways to enable designs to go beyond the reticle size, which is around 8... » read more

Chinese EDA
By Brian Bailey - 29 Oct, 2020 - Comments: 0

If you saw this headline and thought you missed a press release, don't panic. China has not, at this point, announced to the world that it has a suite of EDA tools ready to roll. The rest of the world is content to look at the substandard attempts it have made so far and write them off as not being capable of developing competitive EDA software. But in all likelihood, given the current politica... » read more

A Renaissance For Semiconductors
By Brian Bailey - 29 Oct, 2020 - Comments: 2

Major shifts in semiconductors and end markets are driving what some are calling a renaissance in technology, but navigating this new, multi-faceted set of requirements may cause some structural changes for the chip industry as it becomes more difficult for a single company to do everything. For the past decade, the mobile phone industry has been the dominant driver for the semiconductor eco... » read more

Is Hardware-Assisted Verification Avoidable?
By Brian Bailey - 29 Oct, 2020 - Comments: 1

Emulation is emerging as the tool of choice for complex and large designs, but companies that swap from simulation to emulation increasingly recognize this is not an easy transition. It requires money, time, and effort, and even then not everyone gets it right. Still, there are significant benefits to moving from simulation to emulation, providing these systems can be utilized efficiently en... » read more

Increase In Analog Problems
By Brian Bailey - 19 Oct, 2020 - Comments: 6

Analog and mixed signal design has always been tough, but a resent survey suggests that the industry has seen significantly increased failures in the past year because the analog circuitry within an ASIC was out of tolerance. What is causing this spike in failures? Is it just a glitch in the data, or are these problems real? The answer is complicated, and to a large extent it depends heavily... » read more

Searching For Power Bugs
By Brian Bailey - 15 Oct, 2020 - Comments: 0

How much power is your design meant to consume while performing a particular function? For many designs, getting this right may separate success from failure, but knowing that right number is not as easy as it sounds. Significant gaps remain between what power analysis may predict and what silicon consumes. As fast as known gaps are closed, new challenges and demands are being placed on the ... » read more

Optimizing What Exactly?
By Brian Bailey - 24 Sep, 2020 - Comments: 0

You can't optimize something without understanding it. While we inherently understand what this means, we are often too busy implementing something to stop and think about it. Some people may not even be sure what it is that they should be optimizing and that makes it very difficult to know if you have been successful. This was a key message delivered by Professor David Patterson at the Embedde... » read more

Have Processor Counts Stalled?
By Brian Bailey - 24 Sep, 2020 - Comments: 2

Survey data suggests that additional microprocessor cores are not being added into SoCs, but you have to dig into the numbers to find out what is really going on. The reasons are complicated. They include everything from software programming models to market shifts and new use cases. So while the survey numbers appear to be flat, market and technology dynamics could have a big impact in resh... » read more

Productivity Keeping Pace With Complexity
By Brian Bailey - 24 Sep, 2020 - Comments: 0

Designs have become larger and more complex and yet design time has shortened, but team sizes remain essentially flat. Does this show that productivity is keeping pace with complexity for everyone? The answer appears to be yes, at least for now, for a multitude of reasons. More design and IP reuse is using more and larger IP blocks and subsystems. In addition, the tools are improving, and mo... » read more

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