Are Sustainability And Safety Gen Z’s Top Requirements In 2031?


This blog is my 125th on the "Frankly Speaking" channel on SemiEngineering. A big thanks to Ed and his team for a great run and for putting up with my musings! I had started work-related blogging back in 2008, more company-specific, and some of these have since then vanished from the internet. Who would have thought! For this anniversary, I am looking forward ten years to 2031 and how generatio... » read more

Intelligent Waveform Replay For Efficient Debug


There is no doubt that design reuse is essential for today’s massive system on chip (SoC) projects. No team, no matter how large or how talented, can design billions of gates from scratch for each new chip. From the earliest days, development teams have leveraged existing gate level designs and register transfer level (RTL) code whenever possible. The emergence of the commercial intellectual ... » read more

How To Extend The ‘Unscalable’ RISC Architectures


A couple of years ago, Erik McClure (a Microsoft software developer, at the time) published a blog entitled RISC Is Fundamentally Unscalable.  This blog was really quite interesting and made some very good points about the limitations of a pure RISC design. The limitations of a pure RISC design It takes me back: some of my first marketing tasks were around the religious war between RISC ... » read more

Addressing Library Characterization And Verification Challenges Using ML


At advanced process nodes, Liberty or library (.lib) requirements are more demanding due to design complexities, increased number of corners required for timing signoff, and the need for statistical variation modeling. This results in an increase in size, complexity, and the number of .lib characterizations. Validation and verification of these complex and large .lib files is a challenging task... » read more

Transistors Reach Tipping Point At 3nm


The semiconductor industry is making its first major change in a new transistor type in more than a decade, moving toward a next-generation structure called gate-all-around (GAA) FETs. Although GAA transistors have yet to ship, many industry experts are wondering how long this technology will deliver — and what new architecture will take over from there. Barring major delays, today’s GAA... » read more

Achieving C-V2X Compliance


Testing the performance of cellular vehicle-to-everything (C-V2X) components and subsystems to achieve compliance against evolving 5G test requirements is an ongoing challenge for the connected vehicle market. The global acceptance for the C-V2X technology takes autonomous driving from a shared vision to mass-market reality. C-V2X uses the 3rd Partner Project (3GPP) standard for 4G and 5G mo... » read more

Fuzz Testing Software-Defined Vehicles Using Agent Instrumentation


Cybersecurity has become intertwined into each step of the automotive development process. In particular, fuzz testing has proven to be a powerful approach to detect unknown vulnerabilities in automotive systems. But with limited instrumentation, especially on software-heavy systems such as high-performance computers (HPCs), several types of issues go undetected, including memory leaks and case... » read more

RF To mmWave Design For Systems


RF-enabled next-generation communication systems and connected devices are differentiated by their performance, size, and cost. Traditionally, custom proprietary IC designs, leveraging the latest advanced-node technology, were developed to meet these product requirements. Increasingly these challenges are being met by moving beyond single IC solutions. Today’s electronic systems often integra... » read more

Image Processing For Vision AI


Recent years have seen an increasing need for Vision AI applications using AI to enable real-time image recognition. Vision AI, which substitutes AI for human visual recognition, requires optimal image processing. Renesas has released RZ/V2M as mid-class, and RZ/V2L as an entry class, Vision AI microprocessors (MPUs). Both products are equipped with DRP-AI which is Dynamically Reconfigurable Pr... » read more

Blog Review: Feb. 23


Synopsys' Varun Agrawal looks at four new technologies have emerged to support the demands on 5G networks and applications, the challenges in validating all of those technologies together, and what's needed to perform end-to-end testing effectively for 5G O-RAN SoCs. Siemens EDA's Ray Salemi points to how FPGA retargeting could help address supply chain difficulties and some of the challenge... » read more

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