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Week In Review: Design, Low Power


Renesas Electronics Corporation will acquire Dialog Semiconductor in an all-cash deal worth about US $5.9 billion. Dialog is a supplier of mixed-signal ICs targeting IoT, consumer, automotive, and industrial. The company's primary areas of focus were communications and power control. These products are complementary to existing Renesas embedded compute products. Dialog CEO Dr. Jalal Bagherli... » read more

Blog Review: Feb. 10


Cadence's Paul McLellan finds out some of the pressing technological challenges and opportunities at the recent SEMI Industry Strategy Symposium, from the purity of gases and other materials used in semiconductor manufacturing to increasing cost and time-to-market pressures. Siemens EDA's Harry Foster examines trends in low power ASIC and IC design, including active management of power and t... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Feb. 8


Transparent sensor Researchers at Osaka University created a thin, flexible, transparent sensor using silver nanowire networks. High-resolution printing was used to fabricate the centimeter-scale cross-aligned silver nanowire arrays, with reproducible feature sizes from 20 to 250 micrometers. As a proof-of-concept for functionality, they used their arrays to detect electrophysiological signals... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


Tools & IP Synopsys is joining Microsoft in the U.S. Department of Defense's Rapid Assured Microelectronics Prototypes (RAMP) program to support the development of IC hardware and workflow prototypes that incorporate Synopsys' assured design and manufacturing flows into Microsoft Azure. The RAMP program aims to bring commercial capabilities and speed to the development of semiconductors fo... » read more

Startup Funding: January 2021


Over $800M in funding went to companies developing autonomous driving technology, from self-driving-focused AI chips to full vehicles and aftermarket solutions. A couple electric vehicle manufacturers stood out this month, with investors putting large backing behind US-based Rivian and China-based Leapmotor. And with EVs come lots of batteries: funding went to a few startups trying out new batt... » read more

Blog Review: Feb. 3


Cadence's Paul McLellan listens in on the outlook from SEMI's recent Industry Strategy Symposium, which looked at the prospects for global recovery, the application areas where growth is expected, and how segments have recently performed. Siemens EDA's Harry Foster takes a look at trends in the adoption of languages and libraries for IC and ASIC designs and finds continued interest in System... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Feb. 2


MXene antennas Researchers at Drexel University and Villanova University developed spray-on antennas made of the 2D materials MXene that is flexible and light while maintaining good signal. "This combination of communications performance with extreme thinness, flexibility and durability sets a new standard for antenna technology," said Yury Gogotsi, professor of Materials Science and Engine... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


The CXL Consortium published the Compute Express Link 2.0 specification. CXL is an interconnect that maintains memory coherency between the CPU memory space and memory on attached devices. CXL 2.0 adds support for switching for fan-out to connect to more devices, memory pooling for increased memory utilization efficiency and providing memory capacity on demand, and support for persistent memory... » read more

Blog Review: Jan. 27


Synopsys' Godwin Maben finds that applications like high-performance computing and AI are bringing new dynamics to the power equation, and the key power considerations for chip design that will likely emerge over the course of the year. Siemens EDA's Harry Foster checks out trends in verification technology adoption for IC and ASIC design, with increasing numbers of designs using both dynami... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Jan. 26


Neural networks on MCUs Researchers at MIT are working to bring neural networks to Internet of Things devices. The team's MCUNet is a system that designs compact neural networks for deep learning on microcontrollers with limited memory and processing power. MCUNet is made up of two components. One is TinyEngine, an inference engine that directs resource management. TinyEngine is optimized t... » read more

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