IP’s Ecosystem Race


By Ann Steffora Mutschler As the semiconductor industry moves from older manufacturing nodes to newer ones what users want from IP providers is changing. So is the way IP providers are answering those needs. Mirroring the broader semiconductor industry’s recognition that it’s simply too expensive, too difficult and too time consuming to do everything alone—the very basis of the IP sec... » read more

Timing Bomb


By Ed Sperling Timing closure, a basic operation in chip design and development, is becoming anything but basic at advanced process nodes. Systematic variability that was at least predictable at 90nm has become random at 45nm. Tools that worked fine with two corner cases now have to deal with hundreds. And as more functions make their way onto a single die, often with multiple modes of oper... » read more

End User Report: ON Semiconductor


By Ed Sperling System-Level Design sat down with Daniel McCranie, ON’s chairman, to discuss what drives the company, what it considers as critical to staying profitable, and future competitive threats. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SLD: Why has ON been making so many acquisitions? Is it a need to get big or to shift direction? McCranie: You’re right that ON is extre... » read more

Who’s Calling The Shots Now?


By Ann Steffora Mutschler Determining who makes the decisions in semiconductor industry is not as easy as it sounds. There is not a straight line of responsibility in today’s market due to changing industry dynamics such as the shift from the IDM business model to the foundry model. “If you go back far enough, everyone had to manufacture their own chips. There was a substantial influenc... » read more

Where SoCs Don’t Go


By Pallab Chatterjee The National Association of Broadcaster show is the one place where you can be sure to find some of the most advanced technology on the planet—the kind of stuff used to broadcast, capture and edit 3D content. But while the market for this kind of technology is growing, the quantities of like products are still not high enough to warrant ASICs. It’s a world dominated... » read more

The Problem With Proximity


By Ed Sperling At 90nm companies had to begin thinking seriously about how the signals inside a chip would begin interfering with each other. At 40nm and beyond, they have to consider how signals are interfering with each other across an entire device that may include multiple SoCs. This marks an interesting shift in what companies have been calling holistic design for the better part of a ... » read more

Killer Bugs


By Ed Sperling Hardware and software bugs are all around us. When an application suddenly dies or a smart phone freezes because of the unanticipated interaction between hardware and software blocks in a system on chip, most users aren’t even the least bit fazed. They usually just re-boot and forget about it. Bugs caused by power are an entirely different matter, however. For one thing, ... » read more

The GaN Plan


By Ann Steffora Mutschler Given the need to control power in high-end market segments such as servers, notebooks, mobile handsets and wired communications equipment, the market for gallium nitride (GaN)-based chips is poised for explosive growth. Case in point: Server farms are using more and more electricity, and the cost of that power is getting to be a significant fraction of the operati... » read more

Pricey Processes For Low Power


By Pallab Chatterjee Recently Samsung gave an update on the status and availability of its advanced 32/28nm process technology for use in foundry. The process is targeted for shipping designs to customers at the end of this year, with a road map that continues through the 22/20nm nodes and down to 15nm. What was particularly interesting were several key innovations that have made this all p... » read more

Field Solvers To The Rescue


By Pallab Chatterjee Field solvers have always been part of the Parasitic Extraction (PEX) world, but due to their long run times and complexity in configuration, their role was relegated to the setup/reference table generation for the pattern based 1-D and 2-D RC extraction tools. That’s about to change. Mentor, in combination with STMicroelectronics, one of it customers, said that at ... » read more

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