Week In Review: Design, Low Power


Silvaco acquired the assets of Coupling Wave Solutions (CWS), including IP, patents, and analysis technologies. CWS provides tools for system-level interference analysis of complex SoCs that integrate analog, RF, and digital blocks. Silvaco said that the acquisition expands the company’s portfolio to address RF SOI (Silicon on Insulator) substrate analysis to accurately model and simulate noi... » read more

Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing


Synopsys announced an electronic and photonic co-design platform for photonic integrated circuit (PIC) design, layout implementation, and verification. The OptoCompiler provides schematic-driven layout and advanced photonic layout synthesis in the same platform. AI Rambus says it clocked 4.0 Gbps on its HBM2E memory interface (PHY and controller), which is a desirable speed for AI/ML traini... » read more

Analog Chip Layout: Creativity Vs. Deadlines


The entire design of integrated circuits, from the specification onward, depends on successful validation by measurement of microchips. One key milestone in this process is the completion of the layout. However, the path to reach this point can be quite difficult as many iterations are usually required. It includes: Iterations with the customer to finalize the specification. Iteratio... » read more

AI & IP In Edge Computing For Faster 5G And The IoT


Edge computing, which is the concept of processing and analyzing data in servers closer to the applications they serve, is growing in popularity and opening new markets for established telecom providers, semiconductor startups, and new software ecosystems. It’s brilliant how technology has come together over the last several decades to enable this new space starting with Big Data and the idea... » read more

PCIe 5.0: A Key Interface Solution For The Evolving Data Center


A great many developments are shaping the evolution of the data center. Enterprise workloads are increasingly shifting to the cloud, whether these be hosted or colocation implementations. The nature of workload traffic is changing such that data centers are architected to manage greater east-west (within the data center) communication. New workloads, with AI/ML (artificial intelligence/machine ... » read more

Accelerating Simulation Of PCIe Controllers For DMA Applications


For memory-intensive and high-performance computing, direct memory access (DMA) is indispensable. A typical DMA operation in PCI Express (PCIe) entails the transfer of data from the system memory to end point devices using a point-to-point PCIe bus to reduce latency and increase memory access throughput between the CPU and the device. Verification of DMA engines is concentrated on the data t... » read more

Optimizing For Energy In Physical Design


Energy is a precious resource, which should not be wasted. Energy drives economies and sustains societies. Predictions show that the energy of electronics may soon consume 20% to 33% of the global energy supply, as it is highlighted in this blog post about "Design and Manufacturing in 2030" from Greg Yeric, fellow at Arm. Energy efficiency is such an important global issue that it is ... » read more

Is DVFS Worth The Effort?


Almost all designs have become power-aware and are being forced to consider every power saving technique, but not all of them are yielding the expected results. Moreover, they can add significant complexity into designs, increasing the time it takes to get to tapeout and boosting up the cost. Dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS) is one such power and energy saving technique now being... » read more

A Historical Case For Precision


We take for granted today the staggering precision of modern technology. Cars, electronics, robots, and medical equipment all come off the factory floor composed of effortlessly interchangeable parts, but this was not always the case. In the late 18th century most things that required any kind of precision were made by hand, one notable example being the flintlock musket. You see, back then if ... » read more

Dealing With Device Aging At Advanced Nodes


Premature aging of circuits is becoming troublesome at advanced nodes, where it increasingly is complicated by new market demands, more stress from heat, and tighter tolerances due to increased density and thinner dielectrics. In the past, aging and stress largely were separate challenges. Those lines are starting to blur for a number of reasons. Among them: In automotive, advanced-node... » read more

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