Experts At The Table: What’s Next?


Semiconductor Engineering sat down with Sumit DasGupta, Si2; Simon Bloch, Samsung; Jim Hogan, long-time industry venture capitalist; Mike Gianfagna, vice president of marketing at eSilicon (VP of corporate marketing at Atrenta when this roundtable was held). What follows are excerpts of that discussion. SE: What’s going to really drive interest in low-power technology? Hogan: The world ... » read more

Experts At The Table: What’s Next?


Semiconductor Engineering sat down with Sumit DasGupta, Si2; Simon Bloch, Samsung; Jim Hogan; Mike Gianfagna, vice president of marketing at eSilicon (VP of corporate marketing at Atrenta when this roundtable was held). What follows are excerpts of that discussion. SE: The future of technology isn’t just about technology. It’s about people and regulations, as well. Where are the hurdles ... » read more

When Is Verification Done?


Verification is becoming much more difficult at 16nm/14nm, driven by the sheer complexity of SoCs, the fact that there is much more to verify, and the impact of physical effects, which now affect what used to be exclusively the realm of functional verification. The questions these changes raise are daunting, and for many engineers rather unnerving. The whole validation, verification and debu... » read more

Where Is 2.5D?


After nearly five years of concentrated research, development, test chips and characterization, 2.5D remains a possibility for many companies but a reality for very few. So what’s taking so long and why hasn’t all of this hype turned into production runs instead of test chips? Semiconductor Engineering spent the past two months interviewing dozens of people on this subject, from chipmakers ... » read more

Industry Restructures Around Cost


Talk to any semiconductor executive these days about what’s next for their company and you’ll probably encounter the same perspective—cost will drive future design decisions. Dig a little further, however, and you’ll find no consistent strategy for reducing that cost. While the industry has three very viable solutions for improving the power and performance characteristics of SoCs—... » read more

Executive Viewpoint: Bootstrapping A Startup


This story begins as many new developments have in the EDA industry. A designer, or verification person in this case, by the name of Yuan Lu, was working in a semiconductor company. He manually developed a lot of assertions for use in formal verification. He found they also were useful in a simulation environment, but he had great trouble convincing his fellow workers to develop similar ass... » read more

Making Modeling Less Unpleasant


How many times did your mother tell you to take your medicine? You knew two things: a) it would be unpleasant and b) it would be worth the few seconds of unpleasantness because of the benefits it would provide. It appears as if the electronics industry has the same issue with modeling. We talk about the benefits that having a system-level model would have — the ability to explore system archi... » read more

Is There Light At The End Of Moore’s Tunnel?


Last month’s article, “Is There Light At The End Of Moore’s Tunnel,” examined the state of the industry in terms of integrating photonics components onto silicon. It concentrated on the piece that has been the hardest to achieve – the laser. However, as realizing that integration goal has become closer to reality, it has also waned in terms of the number of people who believe it is th... » read more

Big Changes Rock Global Smartphone Market


It's not just consumers that are benefiting from the proliferation of low-cost mobile multiple-core processors. Chipmakers are reaping the benefits of the booming smartphone market in Asia and around the globe. In the multicore smartphone applications processor market Qualcomm. leads the way with its Snapdragon processors; it accounted for 43% of the market in the first half of this year, fo... » read more

Big Changes Rock Global Smartphone Market


BANGKOK — One of the many draws for Western travelers here in Thailand and throughout much of Asia, including China, is the availability of cheap consumer electronics. Unfortunately many of these electronic goods — little-known off-brands mimicking better-known counterparts, or white-label devices being passed off as name-brand products to unsuspecting consumers — typically are technologi... » read more

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