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Brian Bailey

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Brian Bailey is Technology Editor/EDA for Semiconductor Engineering.

Author's Latest Posts

Technology Tsunami Approaches
By Brian Bailey - 27 Jul, 2015 - Comments: 0

How many times have we heard the saying that technology advancements are accelerating and that inevitably the older generation will have increasing problems keeping up with the new advancements? This happened to me with software development methodologies over fifteen years ago. I still program, when people actually let me, using basically the same techniques I learned when I was in my teens.... » read more

Moore Memory Problems
By Brian Bailey - 09 Jul, 2015 - Comments: 0

The six-transistor static memory cell (SRAM) has been the mainstay of on-chip memory for several decades and has stood the test of time. Today, many advanced SoCs have 50% of the chip area covered with these memories and so they are critical to continued scaling. “The SRAM being used in modern systems is similar to the SRAM they were using in the 1970s and 1980s,” says Duncan Bremner, ch... » read more

Tale Of Two HLS Viewpoints
By Brian Bailey - 09 Jul, 2015 - Comments: 0

The Design Automation Conference attracts several co-located conferences, symposiums and other such gathering of people, often on more specialized topics than would appeal to the general DAC attendees. Some of them are more research-focused, but one conference is somewhat strange in that it is about a subject that has transitioned to commercial tool development and yet still remains an active a... » read more

EDA’s Clouded Future
By Brian Bailey - 25 Jun, 2015 - Comments: 0

There was a time, not that long ago, when chip design and EDA tools consumed some of the largest data centers with tens of thousands of machines and single datasets that consumed more than a hard disk could hold. The existing IT capabilities of the times were stretched to their limits. But while design sizes grew, other aspects of the flow did not develop as fast. “This has been driven by ... » read more

Wrong Verification Revolution Offered
By Brian Bailey - 25 Jun, 2015 - Comments: 0

SoC design traditionally has been an ad-hoc process, with implementation occurring at the register transfer level. This is where verification starts, and after the blocks have been verified, it becomes an iterative process of integration and verification that continues until the complete system has been assembled. But today, this methodology has at least two major problems, which were addres... » read more

DoD Scratches Its Head Over Foundry Security
By Brian Bailey - 25 Jun, 2015 - Comments: 1

When the GlobalFoundries deal with IBM to acquire its foundries closes, as it is slated to sometime during 2015, the U.S. Department of Defense has a small problem on its hands. Military programs no longer will have access to a trusted fab to manufacture semiconductors. How do you ensure that the foundry did not modify or alter your design, add backdoor access or implement a remote control mech... » read more

Full Coverage Or Full Monty
By Brian Bailey - 22 Jun, 2015 - Comments: 0

Without adequate coverage metrics and tools, verification engineers would never be able to answer the proverbial question: are we done yet? But a lot has changed in the design flow since the existing set of metrics was defined. Does it still ensure that the right things get verified, that time is not wasted on things deemed unimportant or a duplication of effort, and can it handle today’s hie... » read more

New Directions For EDA
By Brian Bailey - 16 Jun, 2015 - Comments: 0

DAC is over and everyone is asking – what was the theme this year? It is sometimes difficult to make such a determination because quite often the theme has been there for some time, but suddenly appears more obvious than it did in the past. Some years it is a new product or class of products. The theme also can remain hidden, or disguised. As an example, people have been talking about the ... » read more

Analog’s Day Of Reckoning
By Brian Bailey - 16 Jun, 2015 - Comments: 0

The numbers being touted by the semiconductor industry for IoT edge devices are staggering. How they are going to be used, who will make them, or indeed who will make money from them are much less certain. The industry seems to be clear about the content of these devices. A small processor, some flash memory or possibly even some of the new memory technologies that are coming along, a radio ... » read more

DAC 2015: Day 5
By Brian Bailey - 12 Jun, 2015 - Comments: 0

I feel like the last man standing. The show floor is closed, most of the industry folks have gone and the other press is nowhere to be seen. The good news is that we are still here to cover the events of DAC and to bring you the whole show. The morning starts with a keynote entitled "Electronics for the Human Body." John Rogers from Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign talked about the mismatc... » read more

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