Power/Performance Bits: Aug. 4


Assessing code similarity Researchers from Intel, MIT, and Georgia Institute of Technology created an automated engine designed to learn what a piece of software intends to do by studying the structure of the code and analyzing syntactic differences of other code with similar behavior. The machine inferred code similarity (MISIM) program, a subset of Intel's work on machine programming, was... » read more

Rethinking Competitive One Upmanship Among Foundries


The winner in the foundry business used to be determined by who got to the most advanced process node first. For the most part that benchmark no longer works. Unlike in the past, when all of the foundries and IDMs competed using basically the same process, each foundry has gone its own route. This is primarily due to the divergence of end markets, and the realization that as costs increase, ... » read more

EDA Forms The Basis For Designing Secure Systems


By Adam Cron and Brandon Wang As Internet of Things (IoT) devices rapidly increase in popularity and deployment, security risks are arising at all levels. It could be at the usability level such as social engineering, pretexting, phishing; at the primitive level such as cryptanalysis; at the software level such as client-side scripting, code injection; and now even at the hardware level. Dur... » read more

The Evolution Of Digital Twins


Digital twins are starting to make inroads earlier in the chip design flow, allowing design teams to develop more effective models. But they also are adding new challenges in maintaining those models throughout a chip's lifecycle. Until a couple of years ago, few people in the semiconductor industry had even heard the term "digital twin." Then, suddenly, it was everywhere, causing confusion ... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Chipmakers and OEMs As reported, Intel this week reorganized its operations following delays with its 7nm technology. Intel is behind TSMC and Samsung in technology. As a result, TSMC’s foundry customers, such as AMD, Nvidia and others, are also pulling ahead of Intel. In addition, reports have surfaced that Intel will outsource some of its leading-edge chip production to TSMC. To solve t... » read more

Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing


Pervasive computing — data center, edge, IoT, 5G Qualcomm settled its 5G licensing disagreement with Huawei, which will pay $1.8 billion in back royalties and will pay for licensing going forward. Huawei is also now the world’s largest supplier of smartphones, surpassing Samsung Electronics Co. Qualcomm also announced a super-fast charging platform this week for Android devices that is sup... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


Analog Devices (ADI) acquired the HDMI business of Invecas. “The acquisition of Invecas' HDMI business positions ADI to deliver more complete solutions throughout the entire customer journey – from chip, to certification, to end product," said John Hassett, Senior Vice President, Industrial and Consumer at Analog Devices. "We are thrilled to enhance ADI’s capabilities with the addition of... » read more

Pivoting Toward Safety-Critical Verification In Cars


The inclusion of AI chips in automotive and increasingly in avionics has put a spotlight on advanced-node designs that can meet all of the ASIL-D requirements for temperature and stress. How should designers approach this task, particularly when these devices need to last longer than the applications? Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss these issues with Kurt Shuler, vice president of... » read more

Engineering Within Constraints


One of the themes of DAC this year was the next phase of machine learning. It is as if CNNs and RNNs officially have migrated from the research community and all that is left now is optimization. The academics need something new. Quite correctly, they have identified power as the biggest problem associated with learning and inferencing today, and a large part of that problem is associated with ... » read more

Universal Verification Methodology Running Out Of Steam


For the past decade or so, the Universal Verification Methodology (UVM) has been the de facto verification methodology supported by the entire EDA industry. But as chips become more heterogeneous, more complex, and significantly larger, UVM is running out of steam. Consensus is building that some fundamental changes are required, moving tools up a level of abstraction and making them more ag... » read more

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