category: Top Stories

category: Auto, Security & Edge AI

Anatomy Of A (Better) Gaming Platform
By Ed Sperling - 23 Sep, 2010 - Comments: 0

By Pallab Chatterjee Microsoft’s third-generation Xbox360 engine uses a 45nm silicon on insulator (SOI) process—and a new architecture. The original design was on 90nm and then migrated to 65nm. In both of these cases the fundamental architecture of the system remained the same—a CPU (central processing unit) chip, a GPU (graphics processing unit) chip, and memory management chip for ... » read more

Software Drives Design Requirements
By Ed Sperling - 23 Sep, 2010 - Comments: 0

By Ann Steffora Mutschler As product design evolves to contain more and more software, that software—including the applications that run on the device—is now starting to drive design and process requirements. This change is causing ripples throughout the semiconductor industry, driving evolutionary thinking about where to go next. OEMs have taken notice of a new dynamic and want to capt... » read more

From Multicore To Many-Core
By Ed Sperling - 23 Sep, 2010 - Comments: 0

By Ed Sperling Future SoCs will move from multiple cores—typically two to four in a high-power processor—to dozens of cores. But answers are only beginning to emerge as to where and how those cores will be deployed and how they will be accessed. Just as Moore’s Law forced a move to multicore architectures inside a single processor because of leakage at higher frequencies, it will begi... » read more

Where’s The Multicore Software?
By Ed Sperling - 23 Sep, 2010 - Comments: 0

By David Lammers Multicore processors are being readied for embedded applications but software developers will need to get prepared if they expect to wring the maximum benefits from them. Rob Oshana, director of software R&D at Freescale Semiconductor’s networking and multimedia group, said software developers increasingly are asking if their code will easily port to multicore CPUs. �... » read more

Moving To Open-Source Software
By Ann Mutschler - 23 Sep, 2010 - Comments: 0

By Ann Steffora Mutschler With the typical cost of software accounting for 40% to 60% of an SoC, semiconductor OEMs are under more pressure than ever to meet margins. As a result, they are drawing on their ecosystem partners to provide a more complete foundation including hardware, software, FPGA prototypes, verification IP and virtual models, as well as an increasing demand for open source so... » read more

Best Practices In Team Building
By Ed Sperling - 26 Aug, 2010 - Comments: 0

By Ed Sperling Putting analog and digital engineers in the same room used to elicit strange looks and under-the-breath comments, but most companies have gotten beyond that stage. Now the question is how to pair them up effectively, get them all on the same team—sometimes even with software engineers thrown into the mix—while still getting a product out the door on time. This is easier s... » read more

What’s Next After DRAM?
By Ed Sperling - 26 Aug, 2010 - Comments: 0

By Pallab Chatterjee At the most recent Denali Memcon, there was a panel discussion and debate about the future of DRAM and possible successor technologies. The discussion was moderated by Cadence’s Steve Leibson and featured Bob Merritt of Convergent Semiconductor, Barry Hoberman of Crocus, Ed Doller of Micron and Marc Greenberg of Denali/Cadence. The topic of the discuss was based on t... » read more

The Growing Software Challenge: From Stacks To SMP
By Ann Mutschler - 26 Aug, 2010 - Comments: 0

By Ann Steffora Mutschler Building a system now includes software, but defining the software stack is a mounting challenge for engineers. What used to be almost exclusively drivers now includes RTOSes and OSes, executable files, middleware, firmware, IP, embedded software and applications. With millions of different embedded products, all with different sets of software, it comes down to pr... » read more

Extending Moore’s Law
By Ann Mutschler - 26 Aug, 2010 - Comments: 0

By Ann Steffora Mutschler For Moore’s Law to perpetuate, the materials used in semiconductor manufacturing must do their part to allow the scaling of devices to occur. Some of the latest include a carbonless film deposition technology for 20nm transistors and smaller, a plastic memory device and a material compound of silicon, copper, nickel and iron that researchers believe could lower manu... » read more

The Shape Of Things To Come
By Ed Sperling - 26 Aug, 2010 - Comments: 0

By David Lammers Tall or thin? That is the question facing semiconductor companies, now reaching an “intense” phase in development of the vertical finFET and planar ETSOI (extra thin silicon on insulator) transistors for the 22/20nm and 15/14nm technology generations. “This is a conservative industry,” said Raj Jammy, vice president of materials and emerging technologies at Sematech... » read more

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