Author's Latest Posts


Blog Review: Feb. 15


Siemens EDA's Harry Foster examines the relationship between verification maturity and non-trivial bug escapes into production, as well as whether safety critical development processes yield higher quality in terms of preventing bugs and achieving silicon success. Synopsys' Shankar Krishnamoorthy finds that the rapid progress of machine learning models is driving demand for more domain-speci... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


Arm is heading for an IPO this year, with plans "fairly well developed and underway now," CEO Rene Haas told Reuters. Arm reported fiscal Q3 revenue of $746 million, up 28% compared with the same period in 2021, setting the stage for a public offering. The company noted it had double- or triple-revenue increases in automotive, consumer, infrastructure, and IoT. The Si2 Compact Model Coalit... » read more

Blog Review: Feb. 8


Cadence's Sanjeet Kumar points to key changes and optimizations that are done for USB3 Gen T compared to USB3 Gen X tunneling in order to minimize tunnel overhead and maximize USB3 throughput. Siemens EDA's Harry Foster considers the effectiveness of IC and ASIC verification by looking at schedule overruns, number of required spins, and classification of functional bugs. Synopsys' Chris C... » read more

Research Bits: Feb. 6


Pillars for chiplet integration Researchers from the Tokyo Institute of Technology proposed a new chiplet integration technology called Pillar-Suspended Bridge (PSB), which they say is a simpler method of chip-to-chip connection compared to silicon interposers and redistribution layers. In the PSB, only a pillar-shaped metal structure called a "MicroPillar" is interposed at the connection b... » read more

Week in Review: Design, Low Power


Intel discontinued its Pathfinder for RISC-V program, according to numerous reports. The program provided a pre-silicon development environment to support IP selection and early-stage software development using Intel FPGA and simulator platforms. "Since Intel will not be providing any additional releases or bug fixes, we encourage you to promptly transition to third-party RISC-V software tools ... » read more

Startup Funding: January 2023


Quantum computing had a good month in January, collectively raising over $240 million. A significant chunk of that went to a full-stack quantum company whose processers use neutral atoms manipulated by optical tweezers. Other companies funded this month are developing trapped ion processors, photonics-based processors, and quantum memories, which will be essential for quantum networking. Two co... » read more

Blog Review: Feb. 1


Siemens EDA's Harry Foster explores trends in low power design techniques for ICs and ASICs, with 72% of design projects reported actively managing power. Synopsys' Charlie Matar, Rita Horner, and Pawini Mahajan look at the concept of reliability, availability, and serviceability (RAS) in the context of high-performance computing SoC designs and how it can be supported with silicon lifecycle... » read more

Blog Review: Jan. 25


Cadence's Shyam Sharma shares some important design and verification considerations when working with DDR5 SDRAM and DDR5 DIMM-based memory subsystems, including reset and power on initialization, speed bin compliance, and refresh, RFM, and temperature requirements. Siemens EDA's Harry Foster examines trends in adoption of languages and libraries for IC and ASIC design, testbench creation, a... » read more

Research Bits: Jan. 24


Transistor-free compute-in-memory Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, Sandia National Laboratories, and Brookhaven National Laboratory propose a transistor-free compute-in-memory (CIM) architecture to overcome memory bottlenecks and reduce power consumption in AI workloads. "Even when used in a compute-in-memory architecture, transistors compromise the access time of data," sai... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


Worldwide semiconductor revenue increased 1.1% in 2022 to $601.7 billion, up from $595 billion in 2021, according to preliminary results from Gartner. The combined revenue of the top 25 semiconductor vendors increased 2.8% in 2022 and accounted for 77.5% of the market. The memory segment posted a 10% revenue decrease. Analog showed the strongest growth, up 19% from 2021, followed by discretes, ... » read more

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