Accounting For Power Earlier


Concerns about power usage in an SoC are far from new, but the adoption of power management techniques still varies by company and by project. Leading semiconductor providers have made the necessary changes in tooling and methodology to account for [getkc id="106" kc_name="power awareness"] because they have to, but the rest of the industry hasn't necessarily caught up. “The companies t... » read more

EDA Challenges Machine Learning


Over the past few years, [getkc id="305" kc_name="machine learning"] (ML) has evolved from an interesting new approach that allows computers to beat champions at chess and Go, into one that is touted as a panacea for almost everything. While there is clearly a lot of hype surrounding this, it appears that machine learning can produce a better outcome for many tasks in the EDA flow than even the... » read more

Fan-Outs vs. TSVs


Two years ago, at the annual IMAPS conference on 2.5D and 3D chip packaging, the presentations were dominated by talk of fan-out wafer-level packaging. There was almost no talk of through-silicon vias, which previously had been heralded as vital to 2.5D and 3DIC packaging. Fast forward to this month's 3D Architectures for Heterogeneous Integration and Packaging conference in Burlingame, Cali... » read more

Could Liquid IP Lead To Better Chips?


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss the benefits that could come from making IP available as abstract blocks instead of RTL implementations with Mark Johnstone, technical director for Electronic Design Automation for [getentity id="22499" e_name="NXP"] Semiconductor; [getperson id="11489" p_name="Drew Wingard"], CTO at [getentity id="22605" e_name="Sonics"]; Bryan Bowyer, director of ... » read more

Changes Ahead For Test


Testing microprocessors is becoming more difficult and more time consuming as these devices are designed to take on more complex tasks, such as accelerating artificial intelligence computing, enabling automated driving, and supporting deep neural networks. This is not just limited to microprocessors, either. Graphics processing units are grabbing market share in supercomputing and other area... » read more

Shortages Hit Packaging Biz


Rising demand for chips is hitting the IC packaging supply chain, causing shortages of select manufacturing capacity, various package types, leadframes and even some equipment. Spot shortages for some IC packages began showing up earlier this year, but the problem has been growing and spreading since then. Supply imbalances reached a boiling point in the third and fourth quarters of this yea... » read more

3D Neuromorphic Architectures


Matrix multiplication is a critical operation in conventional neural networks. Each node of the network receives an input signal, multiplies it by some predetermined weight, and passes the result to the next layer of nodes. While the nature of the signal, the method used to determine the weights, and the desired result will all depend on the specific application, the computational task is simpl... » read more

Hyperscaling The Data Center


Enterprise data centers increasingly will look and behave more like slimmed-down versions of hyperscale data centers as chipmakers and other suppliers adapt systems developed for their biggest customers to in-house IT faciilities. The new chips and infrastructure that will serve as building blocks in these facilities will be more power-efficient, make better use of space and generate less he... » read more

Enabling Automotive Design


Falling automotive electronics prices, propelled by advances in chip manufacturing and innovations on the design side, are driving a whole new level of demand across the automotive industry. Innovations that were introduced at the luxury end of the car market over the past couple years already are being implemented in more standard vehicles. The single biggest driver of change in the automo... » read more

IoT’s Many Different Forms


The Internet of Things is settling into widespread industrial applications, along with precision agriculture, while consumer IoT continues to find its way into the home through smart speakers and their digital assistants, such as Amazon Echo, Apple HomeKit, and Google Home. The Internet of Cows and the Internet of Tomatoes may sound like fanciful subjects, yet there is serious technology in ... » read more

← Older posts Newer posts →