Why does EUV matter?


By Brian Bailey The end of Moore’s Law has been predicted for almost as long as the law has existed. It normally comes down to some great technological barrier that cannot be breached, only to find that a solution is just around the corner and the concerns fade until the next barrier is identified. At DAC this year (2013), there were many predictions about why Moore’s Law will end in th... » read more

System Bits: Oct. 1


Origami-Shaped Antennas A Georgia Tech-led research team is working to develop a unique approach to making extremely compact and highly efficient antennas and electronics based on principles derived from origami paper-folding techniques to create complex structures that can reconfigure themselves by unfolding, moving and even twisting in response to incoming electromagnetic signals. The str... » read more

Productivity, Predictability And Use-Model Versatility


Hardware-assisted verification and prototyping has become a mandatory requirement to allow design teams to gain confidence that a chip tape out can be initiated. The choice of the right hardware-accelerated engine is driven by its productivity, predictability, and use-model versatility, all impacting the key concern of users how to remove bugs. The XP Platform allows design teams to get to the ... » read more

Time To Think


The semiconductor industry seems to be running place these days—maybe even sprinting in place. At the leading edge of design, companies are still looking at the ramifications of moving to finFETs. The move to a 20nm process with double patterning on 16/14nm finFETs, depending on the foundry, looks like a fairly safe bet for those companies with the volume and the resources to design and de... » read more

The Rest Is History


I recently fielded some questions on the evolution of Electronic System Level design. The questions started me thinking about how ESL is being applied today and what effect some of the historical assumptions might be having on ESL’s perceived use cases. It’s interesting that we are at a point to consider historical assumptions about ESL. Looking it up, Wikipedia claims that the term ESL ... » read more

Buying And Selling EDA Companies


By Ed Sperling Buying companies is the easy part. Integrating them is the hard part. It’s also the point where most acquisitions that go awry actually run into problems. There are widely different strategies for how to accomplish integration. Sometimes they work, other times they don’t. And sometimes both companies are surprised by the outcome—for better or worse. “Either you thi... » read more

Experts At The Table: How To Improve IP Quality


By Ann Steffora Mutschler Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss the best ways to improve the quality of design IP with Piyush Sancheti, vice president of product marketing at Atrenta; Chris Rowen, Cadence Fellow and former CTO at Tensilica; Gene Matter, senior applications manager at Docea Power; Warren Savage, president and CEO of IPextreme; and Dan Kochpatcharin, deputy director of I... » read more

Established Nodes White Paper


A look at advanced place and route design for established process nodes. To download this white paper, click here. » read more

New Architectures Redefining The Data Center


By Ed Sperling The cost of powering and cooling data centers, coupled with a better understanding of how enterprise-level applications can utilize hardware more effectively, are spawning a new wave of changes inside of data centers. Data centers are always evolving, but in this sector that evolution is deliberate and sometimes painstakingly slow. In fact, each major shift tends to last a de... » read more

More Rigor, Please


By Ann Steffora Mutschler Semiconductor companies are embracing a single-platform strategy for their SoC designs, but sifting through the options can be quite a feat. While not wildly different from the traditional derivative approach, a single-platform strategy can mean different things to different companies. Sometimes it refers to a platform that is already successful in one application ... » read more

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