The Demise Of Static Timing Verification?


The chip industry traditionally has relied on margins to help them mitigate timing problems, but an increasing array of factors are now influencing timing. Can static timing analysis evolve to address these problems? Static timing verification (STA) was a cornerstone technology for the acceptance of the register transfer level (RTL) abstraction. It showed that functionality would not be impa... » read more

Re-Architecting AI For Power


The industry is becoming increasingly concerned about the amount of power being consumed by AI, but there is no simple solution to the problem. It requires a deep understanding of the application, the software and hardware architectures at both the semiconductor and system levels, and how all of this is designed and implemented. Each piece plays a role in the total power consumed and the utilit... » read more

Reliable Training Data Paramount To AI Model Success


AI systems are increasingly being integrated into safety- and mission-critical applications ranging from automotive to health care and industrial IoT, stepping up the need for training data that is reliable, secure, and which is generated from trusted sources. AI activity is growing exponentially, as everybody tries to figure out how to apply it to their domain, application, or workload. In ... » read more

Will New Processor Architectures Raise Energy Efficiency?


Data centers continue to heat up as new processors consume more energy than ever before. Cooling is the primary weapon against the heat these processors generate, but it won’t be able to keep up forever with traditional processor architectures. New ones may be necessary. There are opportunities today to make well-known architectures more energy-efficient, but the number of options for subs... » read more

Can Cheaper Lasers Handle Short Distances?


Optical technology is well established for long-haul communications, but the distances it serves are shrinking — especially in the data center. Vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) already drive short fiber links. But efforts are underway to further scale them down to provide more connections through waveguides than fiber can provide. “We have seen the transition from long... » read more

When Standards Enable Chiplets


Semiconductor Engineering sat down and discussed the need for standards to enable an ecosystem for chiplets with Mark Kuemerle, vice president of technology for Marvell; Letizia Giuliano, vice president for product marketing and management at Alphawave Semi; Hee-Soo Lee, HSD segment lead for Keysight; Mick Posner, senior product group director for Cadence’s Compute Solutions Group; and Rob Kr... » read more

Chiplet Ecosystem Slowly Emerges


Experts at the Table: Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss progress and remaining challenges for designing with chiplets with Mark Kuemerle, vice president of technology for Marvell; Letizia Giuliano, vice president for product marketing and management at Alphawave Semi; Hee-Soo Lee, HSD segment lead for Keysight; Mick Posner, senior product group director for Cadence’s Compute S... » read more

Crisis Ahead: Power Consumption In AI Data Centers


AI data centers are consuming energy at roughly four times the rate that more electricity is being added to grids, setting the stage for fundamental shifts in where power is generated, where AI data centers are built, and much more efficient system, chip, and software architectures. The numbers are particularly striking for the United States and China, which are in a race to ramp up AI data ... » read more

Can Today’s Processor Architectures Be More Efficient?


For years, processors focused on performance, and that performance had little accountability to anything else. Performance still matters, but now it must be accountable to power. If small gains in performance result in disproportionate power gains, designers may need to discard such improvements in favor of more power-efficient ones. Although current architectures undergo a steady cadence of... » read more

Often Overlooked, PHYs Are Essential To High-Speed Data Movement


Over the past couple of decades, the semiconductor industry has evolved from a supporting role for traditional verticals like mobile, automotive, and PCs to a foundational role in those markets, as well as in AI factories and hyperscale data centers. Underlying this transformation is the physical layer (PHY), which has emerged as a critical enabler for data transfer and communications. The P... » read more

← Older posts Newer posts →