category: Top Stories

category: Auto, Security & Edge AI

Rethinking Memory
By Ed Sperling - 16 Dec, 2015 - Comments: 3

Getting data in and out of memory is as important as the speed and efficiency of a processor, but for years design teams managed to skirt the issue because it was quicker, easier and less expensive to boost processor clock frequencies with a brute-force approach. That worked well enough prior to 90nm, and adding more cores at lower clock speeds filled the gap starting at 65nm. After that, th... » read more

New Approaches To Low Power Design
By Ann Mutschler - 14 Dec, 2015 - Comments: 1

While Moore's Law continues to drive feature size reduction and complexity, a whole separate part of the industry is growing up around vertical markets in the IoT. While these two worlds may be different in many respects, they share one thing in common—low power design is critical to success. How engineering teams minimize power in each of these markets, and even within the same market, ca... » read more

How To Choose A Processor
By Ann Mutschler - 10 Dec, 2015 - Comments: 0

Choosing a processor might seem straightforward at first glance, but like many engineering challenges it's harder than it looks. When is a CPU better than a GPU, MCU, DSP or other type of processor? And for what design—or part of a design? For decades, the CPU has been the default choice. “It is deliberately designed to be pretty efficient at all tasks, is straightforward to program, ... » read more

Chasing After Phantom Power
By Brian Bailey - 10 Dec, 2015 - Comments: 1

A lot of effort is being invested in power reduction techniques for mobile devices, where battery life is an important buying decision and power can translate into heat that can make a device uncomfortable to use. But are people willing to pay more for a device that consumes less power if it's plugged into a wall? And even if they are concerned about the power drawn during operation, what ab... » read more

What Goes Wrong With IP
By Ed Sperling - 10 Dec, 2015 - Comments: 0

Semiconductor Engineering sat down to talk about the future of IP with Rob Aitken, R&D fellow at [getentity id="22186" comment="ARM"]; Mike Gianfagna, vice president of marketing at [getentity id="22242" e_name="eSilicon"]; Judd Heape, vice president of product applications at Apical; and Bernard Murphy, an independent industry consultant. What follows are excerpts of that discussion, which... » read more

Reflections On 2015
By Brian Bailey - 10 Dec, 2015 - Comments: 0

It is easy to make predictions, but few people can make them with any degree of accuracy. Most of the time, those predictions are forgotten by the end of the year and there is no one to do a tally of who holds more credibility for next year. Not so with Semiconductor Engineering. We like to hold people's feet to the fire, but while the "Pants-On-Fire" meter may be applicable to politicians, we ... » read more

Power, Standards And The IoT
By Ed Sperling - 08 Dec, 2015 - Comments: 0

Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss power, standards and the IoT with Jerry Frenkil, director of open standards at [getentity id="22055" comment="Si2"]; Frank Schirrmeister, group director of product marketing of the System Development Suite at [getentity id="22032" e_name="Cadence"]; Randy Smith, vice president of marketing at [getentity id="22605" e_name="Sonics"]; and Vojin Zivojno... » read more

Do Circuits Whisper Or Shout?
By Ann Mutschler - 18 Nov, 2015 - Comments: 0

Maximizing SoC performance and minimizing power is becoming a multi-layered and multi-company challenge that depends on everything from ecosystem feedback and interactions to micro-architectural decisions about whether analog circuits whisper or shout. What used to be a straightforward architectural tradeoff between performance and power has evolved into a much more diffuse and collaborativ... » read more

Placing Bets On Future Technology
By Ed Sperling - 16 Nov, 2015 - Comments: 0

Marie Semeria, CEO of Leti, sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to talk about where the French research and technology organization is placing its future technology bets and what's behind those decisions. What follows are excerpts of that discussion. SE: It's becoming more difficult and expensive to shrink features, so where do we go next? Semeria: We see several areas that we believe... » read more

Overcoming The Design Bottleneck
By Brian Bailey - 12 Nov, 2015 - Comments: 0

SoCs control most advanced electronics these days and functionality, quality, power and security are a combination of both hardware and software. All throughout the development of today's complex systems, the memory hierarchy has remained the same—preserving the notion of a continuous computing paradigm. Today, that decision is leading to performance and power issues. There are several rea... » read more

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