Blog Review: September 3


Cadence's Sriram Sharma Kalluri compares convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and transformers to show how their different architectures give them particular strengths and why the choice between them depends on the specific task, the available data, and the computational resources. Siemens' John McMillan provides a primer on the major IC package types, how they influence system design, therm... » read more

AI’s Value In Chip Design Depends On Data Availability


Experts at the Table: Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss the advantages and challenges in using AI in designing chips, with Chuck Alpert, Cadence Fellow; Sathish Balasubramanian, head of product marketing and senior director for custom IC at Siemens EDA; Anand Thiruvengadam, senior director and head of AI product management at Synopsys; Sailesh Kumar, CEO of Baya Systems; Mehir ... » read more

AI Effort And Money Misplaced


While it is early days, and innovation is important, hyperscalers cannot afford to keep throwing money away forever. They need to work out how AI will earn money, and that relies on inference. For some time, I have been intrigued by the amount of money being spent on model development and AI training compared to the investment in inference. Models are an enabler, and every new model is attem... » read more

Chiplet Design Considerations


Chiplets are a way to offer continuing increases in compute capacity and I/O bandwidth needs by splitting SoC functionality into smaller heterogeneous or homogeneous dies called chiplets and integrating these chiplets into a single system in package (SIP), where the total silicon content can exceed the reticle size of a single SoC. SIP includes traditional package substrates but also may includ... » read more

Programmable Hardware Delivers 10,000X Improvement In Verification Speed Over Software For Forward Error Correction


In the race to increase the speeds of wireline networking and communications, forward error correction (FEC) has become a vital part of the toolkit. To function effectively, especially with the increasing use of four-level pulse amplitude modulation (PAM4), high-speed protocols need FEC to avoid a rise in the number of reception errors. Each incremental increase in the transmitted symbol rate r... » read more

Unleashing Heterogeneous Compute: Lessons From Real-World System Design


At the Andes RISC-V CON Silicon Valley held in San Jose, California, in April 2025, Imagination Technologies and Baya Systems delivered a compelling presentation titled “Unleashing Heterogeneous Compute: Lessons from Real-World System Design.” This session, part of the developer track, showcased a joint demonstration leveraging Baya Systems’ WeaverPro CacheStudio software to model a... » read more

Government Funding For Chip Design Tools Spreads


Governments around the globe are starting to invest more heavily in chip design tools and related research as part of an effort to boost on-shore chip production, opening new opportunities for startups and established EDA companies. Those cash infusions, which are being doled out in the U.S., Europe, and Asia, are part of a growing recognition of the importance of design automation tools wit... » read more

An Overview Of CXL Mode Alternate Protocol Negotiation


The Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) protocol has a very powerful feature called Alternate Protocol Negotiation (APN), which was introduced in the PCIe 5.0 specification. This feature allows the alternate protocols (non-PCIe) that use PCIe PHY layer to be enabled and provide their own implementation of the more abstract layers. One of the most common alternate protocols is th... » read more

Silicon Lifecycle Management Gains Traction, But It’s Complicated


Silicon lifecycle management (SLM) is gaining ground in semiconductor design and test by leveraging specialized on-die sensors and analytics engines to improve power, performance, yield, and reliability. Most modern SoCs mitigate the guesswork by leveraging DFT, which includes adding memory built-in self-test (BiST) or improving functional coverage, but these tests were meant for verifying c... » read more

How To Transform Verification Time-To-Results


The clock is ticking. Your team has just completed another full-chip DRC run on a complex 5nm SoC, and the results are overwhelming: millions of violations across hundreds of blocks. With tape-out deadlines approaching, you need to quickly identify which issues are critical, which are systematic and which blocks require immediate attention. Every day spent in DRC debug is a day delayed to marke... » read more

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