LP Spread-Spectrum Sensors


It is pretty much an accepted fact that the common denominator of the IoT will be intelligent sensors. Virtually everything and everyone will be “sensed.” These sensors will collect an immense amount of data, and that data will have to be funneled for analysis at some point. Much of this will occur in real time, but some of it can be stored and forwarded, or collected on demand. Tethered... » read more

Move Over AI, Here Comes AmI


Artificial Intelligence has received lots of attention, but a new term called Ambient Intelligence (AmI) is emerging as a cornerstone of the [getkc id="76" comment="Internet of Things"]. The term is a relatively unknown, but not all that new. AmI dates back 16 years—just a few years after the Internet saw its first widespread commercial adoption—when the concept first emerged as a collec... » read more

What’s Working For Power Verification


Getting power verification right — or at least good enough — is the source of frustration for many design teams. Add to this the fact that there is no one right way to accomplish it just compounds the challenge. Fortunately, there are a number of options that are working to varying degrees, starting with static verification, according to Bernard Murphy, CTO of Atrenta. “Static verifica... » read more

Designing For Energy Efficiency


Swiss watchmakers have nothing to worry about for the moment. As top-name companies crowd into the wearable market with full-featured watches, limits on battery life and frequent charges undoubtedly will limit their popularity. Smart watches look cool or clunky, depending upon your perspective, but none of them lasts long enough between charges to be a serious market contender. That's certai... » read more

Are More Processor Cores Better?


Up until the early 2000s, each generation of processor was faster, used more exotic architectures, had deeper pipelines, used more transistors, ran at higher clock frequencies and consumed more power. In fact power was rising faster than performance and led to the extrapolation that within a few generations, processors would run as hot as nuclear reactors. Something had to change, and that c... » read more

Another Tool In The Bag


Clocks can account for 25% to 40% of total dynamic power consumption in a complex chip, so when looking for areas to reduce power, the clock tree network is a good place to start. Structurally, it is certainly possible to have single-bit flip flops with a clock that connects to every one of the flip flops, and the power in general is proportional to the number of buffers in the clock tree on... » read more

Virtual Prototyping Takes Off


Semiconductor Engineering sat down with Barry Spotts, senior core competency FAE for fabric and tools at [getentity id="22186" comment="ARM"]; Vasan Karighattam, senior director of architecture for SoC and SSW engineering at [getentity id="22664" e_name="Open-Silicon"]; Tom De Schutter, senior product marketing manager for Virtualizer Solutions at [getentity id="22035" e_name="Synopsys"]; Larry... » read more

Keeping Up With The Productivity Challenge


Until recently, EDA software rode the coattails of increasing processor performance as part of its drive to continue providing faster and more powerful development software to the people designing, among other things, the next generation of faster processors. It was a fortuitous ring. Around the turn of the century, with the migration to multi-core computing systems, all of that changed. In ord... » read more

Design Rules Explode At New Nodes


Semiconductor Engineering sat down changing design rules with Sergey Shumarayev, senior director of custom IP design at Altera; Luigi Capodieci, R&D fellow at [getentity id="22819" comment="GlobalFoundries"]; Michael White, director of product marketing for Calibre Physical Verification at [getentity id="22017" e_name="Mentor Graphics"], and Coby Zelnik, CEO of [getentity id="22478" e_name=... » read more

Filling In The Gaps For Mixed-Signal Verification


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss mixed-signal verification with Haiko Morgenstern, Mixed-Signal Verification Group Staff Engineer at Infineon; Dr. Gernot Koch, CAD Manager at Micronas; Pierluigi Daglio, AMS Design Verification Flows Manager at STMicroelectronics; and Helene Thibieroz, AMS marketing manager at [getentity id="22035" comment="Synopsys"]. What follows are excerpts of t... » read more

← Older posts Newer posts →