Mission Profiles In The Automotive Development Process


The automotive industry's roadmap for the coming years is e-mobility and autonomous driving. Its implementation is likely to bring about changes on a par with the invention of the automobile itself. While the motor vehicle used to be primarily a mechanical product, it is now an entirely electronic system. Many of the new functions increase the safety of the driver and other road users, and t... » read more

How UVM Callbacks Simplify Assertion Validation


By Akshay Sarup and Mark Olen Assertions bring immediate benefits to the whole design and verification cycle; thus any challenges engineers face in coding and testing them are worth resolving. When a large number of assertions are to be validated, callbacks save time by eliminating the need to code a new sequence for each scenario. Callbacks also provide more dynamic and fine-grained cont... » read more

Scaling AI/ML Training Performance With HBM2E Memory


In my April SemiEngineering Low Power-High Performance blog, I wrote: “Today, AI/ML neural network training models can exceed 10 billion parameters, soon it will be over 100 billion.” “Soon” didn’t take long to arrive. At the end of May, OpenAI unveiled a new 175-billion parameter GPT-3 language model. This represented a more that 100X jump over the size of GPT-2’s 1.5 billion param... » read more

Redefining The Power Delivery Network


Reliably getting power around a package containing multiple dies, potentially coming from multiple sources, or implemented in diverse technologies, is becoming much more difficult. The tools and needed to do this in an optimized manner are not all there today. Nevertheless, the industry is confident that we can get there. For a single die, the problem has evolved slowly over time. "For a ... » read more

Preparing For A Barrage Of Physical Effects


Advancements in 3D transistors and packaging continue to enable better power and performance in a given footprint, but they also require more attention to physical effects stemming from both increased density and vertical stacking. Even in planar chips developed at 3nm, it will be more difficult to build both thin and thick oxide devices, which will have an impact on everything from power to... » read more

Semiconductors And The Climate Curve


On July 22 I participated in a panel at the virtual SEMICON West conference called “Bending the Climate Curve: Enabling Sustainable Growth of Big Data, AI, and Cloud Computing.” Virtual conferences are mandatory these days, but give a different experience than physical ones. They are very good at disseminating information and are reasonably effective at networking. But, in my experience... » read more

Managing Worst Case Power Conditions


With each new technology node, especially FinFET, the dynamic conditions within a chip are changing and becoming more complex in terms of process speeds, thermal activity and supply variation. Dennard scaling brought about the ability for power to be scaled down with each successive node so that power per unit area stayed roughly constant. However, as highlighted by John Hennessy at last y... » read more

Make Acute Angles A Sharp Problem Of The Past


Sharp angles, whether they create a spike in a poured shape or form an acid trap between two different pieces of metal, are a problem for us all. As designers, we will go out of our way to try and avoid creating these situations; they will still creep into your design despite the best of intentions. How, then, can you efficiently rid your design of them with the minimal change to your routin... » read more

Expanding Automotive Safety With SOTIF


For years, automotive engineering teams have worked to comply with the industry standard ISO 26262, uncovering and addressing functional safety (FuSa) hazards such as software bugs and hardware failures. This standard aims to ensure that complex electronics in today’s cars are reliable ― delivering consistent performance over time, with no critical system failures. With the emergence of ... » read more

Power And Performance Optimization At 7/5/3nm


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss power optimization with Oliver King, CTO at Moortec; João Geada, chief technologist at Ansys; Dino Toffolon, senior vice president of engineering at Synopsys; Bryan Bowyer, director of engineering at Mentor, a Siemens Business; Kiran Burli, senior director of marketing for Arm's Physical Design Group; Kam Kittrell, senior product management group d... » read more

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