Author's Latest Posts


Degrees Of Freedom For Innovation


I have been involved in several startups during my career, both true startups and startup ventures within a large EDA company. While they both demand innovative solutions, they have a very different goal and structures. When researching my story about innovation within EDA (yet to be published), I expected to receive a lot of large company bashing. While some pointed to sales strategies that... » read more

RISC-V Conformance


Experts At The Table: Despite growing excitement and participation in the development of the RISC-V ecosystem, significant holes remain in the development flow. One of the most concerning is conformance, which must exist before software portability becomes possible. Semiconductor Engineering discussed the issue with John Min, vice president of customer service at Arteris; Zdeněk Přikryl, CTO... » read more

Reactionary Or Anticipatory?


The EDA industry is located at an interesting place, where anticipation and reaction come together. Too much of either one is wasteful, but too little leaves the industry having to deal with unwanted problems. We see this happening in several areas today, and the balance is changing for several reasons. We normally expect universities to be 100% anticipatory. There is no point in them worki... » read more

How Big A Deal Is Aging?


Nothing lasts forever, but in the semiconductor world things used to last long enough to become obsolete long before their end of life. That's no longer the case with newer nodes, and it is raising concerns in safety-critical markets such as automotive. Being able to fully understand what happens inside of chips is still a work in progress, and analysis approaches are trying to keep up. Unti... » read more

Barriers To Chiplet Sockets


Experts At The Table: Demand for chiplets is growing, but debate continues about whether standards and general-purpose chiplets will kick-start the commercialization boom, or whether success will come through customization of those chiplets. Semiconductor Engineeering sat down to discuss these and other related issues with Elad Alon, CEO of Blue Cheetah; Mark Kuemerle, vice president of technol... » read more

Pressure Builds To Adopt Virtual Prototypes


Virtual prototypes, often used as a niche tool in the past, are becoming essential for developing complex systems. In fact, systems companies are finding they no longer can function without them. In the semiconductor industry, a virtual prototype is a model for a system at an abstraction level above RTL. But there is no such thing as 'the' virtual prototype. They are constructed for a partic... » read more

What Comes After HBM For Chiplets


Experts At The Table: Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss what will trigger the creation of a commercial chiplet marketplace, and what those chiplet-based designs will look like, with Elad Alon, CEO of Blue Cheetah; Mark Kuemerle, vice president of technology at Marvell; Kevin Yee, senior director of IP and ecosystem marketing at Samsung; Sailesh Kumar, CEO of Baya Systems; and Tanuja... » read more

Is PPA Relevant Today?


The optimization of power, performance, and area (PPA) has been at the core of chip design since the dawn of EDA, but these metrics are becoming less valuable without the context of how and where these chips will be used. Unlike in the past, however, that context now comes from factors outside of hardware development. And while PPA still serves as a useful proxy for many parts of the hardwar... » read more

A New Generation Of 7400 Socket


When I was 18, and just been accepted at Brunel University in West London to start my undergraduate degree in electrical and electronic engineering, I sent off a letter to Texas Instruments telling them about the journey ahead of me and asked if they could they send me a copy of their TTL Data Book. A few weeks later a package arrived and there it was. This incredible brown/orange book, thicker... » read more

Defining The Chiplet Socket


Experts At The Table: The semiconductor industry has been buzzing with the possibilities surrounding chiplets, but so far this packaging technology has been confined to large semiconductor companies that are vertically integrated. The industry has been attempting to open this up to a broader group of people. To work out what this means for chiplets, and what standardization will be required, Se... » read more

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