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

Machine Learning Enabled Root Cause Analysis For Low Power Verification


By Himanshu Bhatt and Susantha Wijesekara Next-generation SoCs with advanced graphics, computing and artificial intelligence capabilities are posing unforeseen challenges in verification. Designers and verification engineers using static verification technologies for low power often see many violations in the initial stages. Efficient debugging and determining root cause is a real issue and ... » read more

An Expanding Application Space For GDDR6 Memory


The origins of graphics double data rate (GDDR) memory can be traced to the rise of 3D gaming on PCs and consoles. The first GPUs used single data rate (SDR) and double data rate (DDR) DRAM, the same memory used for CPU main memory. The quest for higher frame rates at higher resolutions drove the need for a graphics-workload specific memory solution. The commercial success of gaming PCs and con... » read more

Different Roles, Different Tools


A question often posed is: does the use of tools and processes change as you go from block level to subsystem and chip level and as you add software to your system on chip (SoC)? And of course, the answer is that things change a lot. The primary differences between designing individual blocks and designing a big chip are that blocks tend to be designed by individual engineers or very small g... » read more

Enabling Cost-Effective, High-Performance Die-to-Die Connectivity


System advances in accelerated computing platforms such as CPUs, GPUs and FPGAs, heterogeneous systems on chip (SoCs) for AI acceleration and high-speed networking/interconnects have all pushed chip integration to unprecedented levels. This requires more complex designs and higher levels of integration, larger die sizes and adopting the most advanced geometries as quickly as possible. Facing th... » read more

Easier Low Power ICs With Reference Flows


By Terence Chen and Alexander Volkov Power-sensitive ICs for wearables and internet of things (IoT) products are in demand for markets ranging from automotive to military/aerospace to consumer. As with most ICs, cost and time-to-market pressures are important determiners of success. Reducing risk by using a vendor-created reference flow can confer a serious business advantage. Reference f... » read more

Building Fugaku, The World’s Fastest Supercomputer


My fascination with computers started back in 1976. I remember it well: I was in the 8th grade, and I’d just returned to Japan from a stint in the US. One day I found myself in Tokyo’s Akihabara area, otherwise known as ‘Electric Town.’ This place was and still is the tech heartbeat of Japan, bright and buzzing with all the latest gadgets. On this particular day, among the displays of ... » read more

‘Speak No Evil’ And SoC Problems


In the first of this blog trilogy, 'Are you listening,' I looked at not waiting for hindsight to be wise after the event, instead make use of what’s available and act ahead of time. In the second, 'See no evil,' we bizarrely saw how Sir Francis Drake, Admiral Nelson and Clint Eastwood all had something in common with Mizaru, one of the 3 wise monkeys (Kikazaru and Iwazaru being the other two)... » read more

Simulation Of Semiconductor Edge-Emitting Lasers


By Peter Hallschmid and Dylan McGuire The demand for photonics technology continues to grow with popular laser applications including semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs), Fabry-Perot (FP) devices and distributed feedback (DFB) lasers. The next episode of Ansys’ photonics webinar series outlines the latest Ansys Lumerical flows and products for simulating and generating compact mod... » read more

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