category: Opinion

category: IoT, Security & Automotive

Reducing Voltage Guard Band
By Barry Pangrle - 13 Mar, 2025 - Comments: 0

The 2025 International Solid State Circuits Conference was held in San Francisco from February 16th to 20th. IBM presented three papers[1,2,3] based on their Samsung 5nm Tellum II chip. These are interesting in terms of the technology and the specifics about the design and measures taken to improve energy efficiency and reduce power. My first remembrance of a company specializing in guard-ba... » read more

Chiplets: A Technology, Not A Market
By Geoff Tate - 06 Mar, 2025 - Comments: 1

Chiplets are big business, and that business is growing. The total chiplet market today is roughly $40 billion annually. Chiplets account for roughly 15% of TSMC's revenues, and they account for about 25% of all DRAMs. All of the major AI/HPC semiconductor companies (NVIDIA, AMD, Marvell, Broadcom) and the major hyper scalers (Amazon, Google, etc) are looking to chiplets to build superior... » read more

The Price Of Fear
By Brian Bailey - 27 Feb, 2025 - Comments: 0

In my last blog, I talked about how pain is important when making predictions in the semiconductor industry. Pain is related to time to market and risk, and the flip side of risk is fear. Fear is one of the main drivers for a large number of EDA tools, such as those related to verification. The fear is taping out a chip, then waiting for what seems like an eternity to get the first chips bac... » read more

Chiplets: Where Are We Today?
By Barry Pangrle - 05 Feb, 2025 - Comments: 1

The 3rd annual Chiplet Summit was held in Santa Clara from January 21st to 23rd at the Convention Center. The conference continues to grow from its 1st year when it was held at the San Jose Doubletree Hotel (almost exactly 2 years ago). During his Chairman’s Welcome presentation, Chuck Sobey mentioned that there were 41 exhibitors at this year’s conference. Chuck was also the moderator f... » read more

What’s Missing From Predictions
By Brian Bailey - 30 Jan, 2025 - Comments: 1

At this point everyone has made their predictions for the year, but there is one thing many people get wrong. Predictions are not about innovation. They are about pain and what is causing it. This industry is risk-averse, and everyone wants to continue doing what they are doing. But there comes a point when it's so painful to continue that something has to change. Having something that is... » read more

Design And Verification Issues In 2024
By Brian Bailey - 19 Dec, 2024 - Comments: 0

At the end of each year, I look back over the stories published and those that top the charts in terms of readership. I concentrate on those stories that are about the EDA tools and flows and the factors that are influencing them. These are good indicators of the problems designers and verification teams are facing today, and where they are looking for answers. This year's leading categories... » read more

Goal-Driven AI
By Brian Bailey - 26 Nov, 2024 - Comments: 2

For many, the long-term dream for AI within EDA is the ability to define a set of goals and tell the computer to go design it for them. A short while later, an optimized design will pop out. All of today's EDA tools will remain hidden, if they even exist at all. You would only be limited by your imagination. But we also know that AI is not to be trusted today, especially when millions of dol... » read more

GenAI + Semiconductors + Humanity
By Barry Pangrle - 25 Nov, 2024 - Comments: 0

Silicon Catalyst held its 2024 Semiconductor Industry Forum in Mountain View, CA, at the Computer History Museum on November 13th. Richard Curtin, managing partner for Si Catalyst, opened the event by thanking David House, vice chair of the Board at the Computer History Museum and creator of the 4004 processor, and the CHM staff for hosting the event. Richard talked about the start of se... » read more

Degrees Of Freedom For Innovation
By Brian Bailey - 11 Nov, 2024 - Comments: 0

I have been involved in several startups during my career, both true startups and startup ventures within a large EDA company. While they both demand innovative solutions, they have a very different goal and structures. When researching my story about innovation within EDA (yet to be published), I expected to receive a lot of large company bashing. While some pointed to sales strategies that... » read more

Reactionary Or Anticipatory?
By Brian Bailey - 21 Oct, 2024 - Comments: 0

The EDA industry is located at an interesting place, where anticipation and reaction come together. Too much of either one is wasteful, but too little leaves the industry having to deal with unwanted problems. We see this happening in several areas today, and the balance is changing for several reasons. We normally expect universities to be 100% anticipatory. There is no point in them worki... » read more

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