Model Variation And Its Impact On Cell Characterization


EDA (Electronic Design Automation) cell characterization tools have been used extensively to generate models for timing, power and noise at a rapidly growing number of process corners. Today, model variation has become a critical component of cell characterization. Variation can impact circuit timing due to process, voltage, and temperature changes and can lead to timing violations, resulting i... » read more

Dealing With Security Holes In Chips


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss security risks across multiple market segments with Helena Handschuh, security technologies fellow at Rambus; Mike Borza, principal security technologist for the Solutions Group at Synopsys; Steve Carlson, director of aerospace and defense solutions at Cadence; Alric Althoff, senior hardware security engineer at Tortuga Logic; and Joe Kiniry, princi... » read more

Know Your Code: Open Source Security Risks During Development


Exploits of software security vulnerabilities can result in loss of sensitive customer and company information, disruption of business operations, and costly litigation. Organizations are increasingly turning to open source software to save time and money, but few have sufficient visibility into, or control of, open source usage to head off potential open source risks. Read this white paper ... » read more

Blog Review: Nov. 4


Arm's Joshua Sowerby points to how to improve machine learning performance on mobile devices by using smart pruning to remove convolution filters from a network, reducing its size, complexity, and memory footprint. Mentor's Neil Johnson checks out how designers can write and verify RTL real-time using formal property checking in the style of test-driven development and why to give it a try. ... » read more

Speeding Up AI With Vector Instructions


A search is underway across the industry to find the best way to speed up machine learning applications, and optimizing hardware for vector instructions is gaining traction as a key element in that effort. Vector instructions are a class of instructions that enable parallel processing of data sets. An entire array of integers or floating point numbers is processed in a single operation, elim... » read more

Dependent Failure Analysis For Safety-Critical IP And SoCs


By Shivakumar Chonnad, Radu Iacob, and Vladimir Litovtchenko Due to the increased complexity in safety-critical system hardware, software, and mechatronics, the functional safety development process must address systematic and random hardware failures. Numerous safety-related activities are performed during safety-critical IP and SoC developments, as part of the safety lifecycle, from produc... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


M&A AMD will acquire Xilinx for $35 billion in an all-stock deal. "Joining together with AMD will help accelerate growth in our data center business and enable us to pursue a broader customer base across more markets,” said Victor Peng, Xilinx president and CEO. The deal is expected to close by the end of 2021. The acquisition of the programmable logic giant will leave only a few purepla... » read more

Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing


Automotive Synopsys added support for Infineon's automotive AI chip, the AURIX TC4xx 32-bit microcontroller with parallel processing unit. Dialog Semiconductor announced automotive qualification for its DA7280 high-definition haptic driver. The company Alps Alpine is using the DA7280 in Alps Alpine Heavy, the latest version of its HAPTIC Reactor Linear Resonant Actuators (LRAs). Bosch, M... » read more

Making IC Test Faster And More Accessible: Part 1


The fundamental challenges of IC test have been the same for a long time. At the heart of all test strategies is controllability and observability. First, control the state of the chip with known test vectors and then observe the chip to determine if it exhibits good or faulty behavior. There have been many innovations over the years to make the required testing of chips more tractable. Thanks ... » read more

A Renaissance For Semiconductors


Major shifts in semiconductors and end markets are driving what some are calling a renaissance in technology, but navigating this new, multi-faceted set of requirements may cause some structural changes for the chip industry as it becomes more difficult for a single company to do everything. For the past decade, the mobile phone industry has been the dominant driver for the semiconductor eco... » read more

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