category: Special Reports

category: IoT, Security & Automotive

Re-Engineering The FinFET
By Mark LaPedus - 13 Nov, 2014 - Comments: 0

The semiconductor industry is still in the early stages of the [getkc id="185" kc_name="finFET"] era, but the [getkc id="26" kc_name="transistor"] technology already is undergoing a dramatic change. The fins themselves are getting a makeover. In the first-generation finFETs, the fins were relatively short and tapered. In the next wave, the fins are expected to get taller, thinner and more re... » read more

Rethinking Big Data
By Ernest Worthman - 10 Nov, 2014 - Comments: 0

You have to marvel at the sheer genius of what modern day, edge-of-the envelope marketing schemes can accomplish. For example, terms such as the [getkc id="76" comment="Internet of Things"], (also referred to as the Cloud of Things, or the Internet of Everything, or even Internet of Interconnect) have become sexy, interesting, exciting camouflage layers over the rather dull M2M industry. The... » read more

Keeping Up With The Productivity Challenge
By Brian Bailey - 06 Nov, 2014 - Comments: 3

Until recently, EDA software rode the coattails of increasing processor performance as part of its drive to continue providing faster and more powerful development software to the people designing, among other things, the next generation of faster processors. It was a fortuitous ring. Around the turn of the century, with the migration to multi-core computing systems, all of that changed. In ord... » read more

Will 7nm And 5nm Really Happen?
By Mark LaPedus - 14 Jul, 2014 - Comments: 2

Today’s silicon-based finFETs could run out of steam at 10nm. If or when chipmakers move beyond 10nm, IC vendors will require a new transistor architecture. III-V finFETs, gate-all-around FETs, quantum well finFETs, SOI finFETs and vertical nanowires are just a few of the future transistor candidates at 7nm and 5nm. Technically, it’s possible to manufacture the transistor portions of the... » read more

Locking Down The Chip
By Ernest Worthman - 09 Jul, 2014 - Comments: 0

The push toward securing chips is complicated by the amount of third-party IP that is being used inside of today’s complex SoCs. This has cast new light on the potential for on-chip networks to also function in securing signals that flow through those networks. This becomes particularly important with the Internet of Things, because the source of those signals isn’t always obvious to the... » read more

The Next Big Threat: AI Malware
By Ernest Worthman - 07 Jul, 2014 - Comments: 1

It’s an understatement to say that today’s cyber adversaries and cyber threats are reaching unparalleled levels of sophistication. Malevolent entries and their creators have, and will continue to, devise über-complex malware that will seem to take on an intelligence of its own. In fact, artificially intelligent malware is coming to a system near you. The ability of threats to morph, on ... » read more

Not All Qubits Are Small
By Katherine Derbyshire - 30 Jun, 2014 - Comments: 1

While diamond nitrogen-vacancy centers offer one attractive implementation of quantum qubits, many other systems have been proposed. In theory, at least, any system with clearly identifiable quantum states can serve the purpose. The challenge lies in finding a system in which those states can be manipulated and measured by external forces and can be fabricated in large enough numbers for practi... » read more

Locking Down The Chip
By Ernest Worthman - 05 Jun, 2014 - Comments: 1

The crypto processor is poised to break into the mainstream SoC world. Lower costs for manufacturing, coupled with rising security concerns from increased connectivity and growing complexity have cracked open the door on this approach to locking down a chip. Crypto processors aren’t a new concept, but they generally have been reserved for high-end applications. Until recently, they have ju... » read more

Easing The Path To Evolution
By Ann Mutschler - 29 May, 2014 - Comments: 1

On the surface, revolutionary changes in EDA seem unlikely due to the risk of replacing costly tools, flows and methodologies. But are they really? The answer depends on whom you ask. For Part One, click here. Risk is a big part of the equation here. “There are always pioneers in an organization and what you need to do is find someone who is willing to take some risk and typically it’s o... » read more

Big Memory Shift Ahead
By Brian Bailey - 22 May, 2014 - Comments: 1

System architecture has been driven by the performance of [getkc id="22" kc_name="memory"]. Processor designers would have liked all of the memory be fast [getkc id="92" kc_name="SRAM"], placed on-chip for maximum performance, but that was not an option. Memory had to be fabricated as separate chips and connected via a Printed Circuit Board (PCB). That limited the number of available I/O ports ... » read more

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