Making Software Better


Gauging the energy efficiency of software is a difficult task. There are many types of software, from embedded code all the way up to software that controls various modes of operation to downloaded applications. Some software interacts with other software, while other software works independently. And some works better on one SoC configuration than another, or on one iteration of an operating s... » read more

Changing The IP Supplier Paradigm


Just a few years ago, the [getkc id="43" comment="Intellectual Property"] (IP) business consisted of small blocks being sold by small companies and an almost over the wall delivery mechanism. The industry quickly realized the problems with this supply chain and the IP business went through very rapid change. At the same time, the average size of the IP blocks has increased and today, what we th... » read more

Established Nodes Getting New Attention


As the price of shrinking features increases below 28nm, there has been a corresponding push to create new designs at established nodes using everything from near-threshold computing to back biasing and mostly accurate analog sensors. The goals of power, performance and cost haven’t changed, but there is a growing realization among many chipmakers that the formula can be improved upon with... » read more

Test Becomes Power-Aware


Power-aware test plans are changing, becoming far more extensive than the minimalist plans that were common just a few years ago. In the past would determine if they could power their design up, power it down, then they’d declare it done. “Sometimes they would find they could power it up and power it down once, but they couldn’t power it up a second time because they’d forgotten to ... » read more

IP And FinFETs At Advanced Nodes


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss IP and finFETs at advanced nodes with Warren Savage, president and CEO of IPextreme; Aveek Sarkar, vice president of engineering and product support at Ansys-Apache; Randy Smith, vice president of marketing at Sonics, and Bernard Murphy, CTO of Atrenta. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: It’s harder for a fabless semiconductor ... » read more

IP And FinFETs At Advanced Nodes


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss IP and finFETs at advanced nodes with Warren Savage, president and CEO of IPextreme; Aveek Sarkar, vice president of engineering and product support at Ansys-Apache; Randy Smith, vice president of marketing at Sonics, and Bernard Murphy, CTO of Atrenta;. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: What happens with the next revs of finFET... » read more

Executive Insight: Ajoy Bose


SE: What keeps you awake at night? Bose: What I worry about more than anything else is the need for us (at Atrenta) to show growth on an ongoing basis. A company’s challenges change with the lifecycle of that company. In the early days you worry about survival and trying to establish yourself in the industry. Fortunately, Atrenta is a bigger company today, so the nature of the concerns has c... » read more

After Moore’s Law: More With Less


In the decades when Moore’s Law went unquestioned, the industry was able to migrate to the next smaller node and receive access to more devices that could be used for increased functionality and additional integration. While less significant transistor-level power savings have been seen from the more recent nodes, as leakage currents have increased, the additional levels of integration have b... » read more

Raising The Abstraction Of Power: Trends


Given that design requirements for today’s SoCs go well beyond performance and area, energy efficiency and its impact on system design plays a major role for many end applications ranging from wireless sensor networks to autonomous vehicles as well as emerging applications in the Internet of Things market segment, where cooling capability is limited and expensive. For these reasons, a comp... » read more

IP And FinFETs At Advanced Nodes


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss IP and finFETs at advanced nodes with Bernard Murphy, CTO of Atrenta; Warren Savage, president and CEO of IPextreme; Aveek Sarkar, vice president of engineering and product support at Ansys-Apache; Randy Smith, vice president of marketing at Sonics. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: As we push into the next nodes, we’ve got a ... » read more

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