Implementing Fast Barriers For A Shared-Memory Cluster Of 1024 RISC-V Cores


A technical paper titled “Fast Shared-Memory Barrier Synchronization for a 1024-Cores RISC-V Many-Core Cluster” was published by researchers at ETH Zürich and Università di Bologna. "Synchronization is likely the most critical performance killer in shared-memory parallel programs. With the rise of multi-core and many-core processors, the relative impact on performance and energy overhe... » read more

RISC-V Open Platform for Next-Gen Automotive ECUs (ETH Zurich, Huawei)


A technical paper titled “Towards a RISC-V Open Platform for Next-generation Automotive ECUs” was published by researchers at ETH Zurich and Huawei Research Center (Italy). Abstract: "The complexity of automotive systems is increasing quickly due to the integration of novel functionalities such as assisted or autonomous driving. However, increasing complexity poses considerable challenges... » read more

Demonstrating The Capabilities Of Virtual Wafer Process Modeling And Virtual Metrology


A technical paper titled “Review of virtual wafer process modeling and metrology for advanced technology development” was published by researchers at Coventor Inc., Lam Research. Abstract: "Semiconductor logic and memory technology development continues to push the limits of process complexity and cost, especially as the industry migrates to the 5 nm node and beyond. Optimization of the p... » read more

Are In-Person Conferences Sustainable?


DAC/Semicon are now over, and while I missed a large part of it due to a stomach bug, I increasingly have a stale taste in my mouth about in-person conferences in general. Let's split things up – an event such as DAC is both an academic conference and a trade show. It has been that way almost since its inception 60 years ago. There are many other conferences that are pure conferences, and the... » read more

A Packet-Based Architecture For Edge AI Inference


Despite significant improvements in throughput, edge AI accelerators (Neural Processing Units, or NPUs) are still often underutilized. Inefficient management of weights and activations leads to fewer available cores utilized for multiply-accumulate (MAC) operations. Edge AI applications frequently need to run on small, low-power devices, limiting the area and power allocated for memory and comp... » read more

Shift Left, Extend Right, Stretch Sideways


The EDA industry has been talking about shift left for a few years, but development flows are now being stretched in two additional ways, extending right to include silicon lifecycle management, and sideways to include safety and security. In addition, safety and security join verification and power as being vertical concerns, and we are increasingly seeing interlinking within those concerns. ... » read more

The Good And Bad Of Chip Design On Cloud


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to talk about how the shift toward chip design on cloud has sped up, whether the benefits of cloud are realized in chip design, and some of the most pressing challenges to chip design on cloud today, with Philip Steinke, fellow, CAD infrastructure and physical design at AMD; Mahesh Turaga, vice president of business development for cloud at Cadence Design Syst... » read more

DAC 2023: Megatrends And The Road Ahead For Design Automation


As Silicon Valley is in the midst of the heat wave the world is experiencing, the recent Design Automation Conference and its exhibition discussed hot technologies. Three megatrends defined the current situation – artificial intelligence (AI), chiplets, and integration. To me, the more exciting aspect of DAC was the discussion of what is ahead for EDA in the decade to come, and for that, the ... » read more

Large-Scale Integration’s Future Depends On Modeling


VLSI is a term that conjures up images of a college textbook, but some of the concepts included in very large-scale integration remain relevant and continue to evolve, while others have fallen by the wayside. The portion of VLSI that remains most relevant for semiconductor industry is "integration," which is pushing well beyond the edges of a monolithic planar chip. But that expansion also i... » read more

Context-Aware Analysis Can Automatically Protect Critical Nets And Devices During Fill Insertion


Context-aware physical verification (PV) is a relatively new addition to traditional PV flows, but it has quickly become a critical and essential technology that addresses the increasing complexity of geometrical checks used in both established and emerging integrated circuit (IC) technologies. Traditional electronic design automation (EDA) verification tools handle either the physical verifica... » read more

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