Coming Up With The Wrong Formal Answer


It was a surreal moment. I was sitting in a conference room in Portland listening to a panel session about [getkc id="33" kc_name="formal"] methods. The topic was discussing the fact that there is insufficient education at the undergraduate level in formal methods and algorithmic approaches to verification. You can read about the panel here. In the question and answer session, a point was ma... » read more

Tech Talk: 2.5D Stacked Die


What's the motivation for moving to 2.5D packaging and architectures rather than following Moore's Law? Shafy Eltoukhy, VP of operations and technology development at Open-Silicon, talks with Semiconductor Engineering about adding another dimension in semiconductors. [youtube vid=HwpY9bUNt0w] » read more

The Hunt For The Next Application To Drive System-Level Design And Verification


In recent years, most of my customer presentations highlighted some type of mobile device – system and system on chip (SoC) — to explain the challenges for system-level design and verification. But I also like to look into other application domains to understand how challenges may develop over time and to identify similarities and differences in challenges between application domains. Co... » read more

Blog Review: Nov. 20


Can you really heat your home office with just four candles? It all depends on where you put those candles, as Mentor’s Robin Bornoff shows in part one of this series. And make sure you check out the video, particularly if you’ve had a tough day. Synopsys’ Karen Bartleson interviews ST’s Oleg Logvinov on camera about the IoT, which may be the biggest change since the Industrial Revol... » read more

System Bits: Nov. 19


Practical Invisibility Anyone who has read Harry Potter or watched Star Trek knows how powerful invisibility can be—at least in science fiction or the world of magic. But now, two researchers in The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto have demonstrated an effective invisibility cloak that is thin, scalable and adaptive to diff... » read more

The Week in Review: System-Level Design


Cadence unveiled its next-gen power signoff tool, this one based upon parallel execution across multiple processors. The result is 10x speed improvement, according to the company. The signoff solution already is certified for TSMC’s 16nm finFET process for IR drop analysis and EM rule compliance, two of the big concerns with finFETs. Synopsys teamed up with CEVA to improve PPA for CEVA’s... » read more

Blog Review: Nov. 13


Synopsys’ Brent Gregory digs into optimal paths—in this case between the bakery, the library and another store. This is the classic traveling salesman equation, but with a large sales staff and lots of stops. Mentor’s Michael Ford points to the gap between supply-chain and shop-floor management solutions. This is yet another example of thinking outside the package—and maybe the enti... » read more

Executive Viewpoint: Atoptech’s Jue-Hsien Chern


What is the difference between skyscrapers and chips? Dr Chern has worked on both and he says it’s all about how you apply margins. Jue-Hsien Chern started his technology career earning a M.S. and B.S. in Engineering from National Taiwan University and majored in structural engineering — bridges, dams, tunnels and high-rise buildings, all of which had to withstand earthquakes. That is a ... » read more

System Bits: Nov. 12


3D Printers When thinking about 3D printers, most people probably think about creating small plastic parts or prototypes. 3D printing now can be used to print lithium-ion microbatteries the size of a grain of sand. The printed microbatteries could supply electricity to tiny devices in fields from medicine to communications, including many that have lingered on lab benches for lack of a batt... » read more

Experts At The Table: The Future Of Verification


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss the future of verification with Janick Bergeron, Synopsys fellow; Harry Foster, chief verification scientist at Mentor Graphics; Frank Schirrmeister, group director of product marketing for the Cadence System Development Suite; Prakash Narain, president and CEO of Real Intent; and Yunshan Zhu, vice president of new technologies at Atrenta. What foll... » read more

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