How To Build A Better MEMS Microphone


We are seeing a lot of interest in simulating noise, particularly for condenser microphones. With any transducer, noise reduction is always a plus, and with microphones there are two specific applications that need low noise. One is where the microphone is positioned away from the sound source, such as in video calling or when using voice commands with tablet computers. The other is where multi... » read more

Blog Review: Feb. 14


Mentor's Matthew Hogan takes a look at why it's important to establish a baseline reliability verification process and how foundry rule decks fit in. Synopsys' Robert Vamosi digs into the issues with fitness tracker Strava's heatmap, how it could be manipulated, and why the risks of big data analytics go beyond wearables. Cadence's Paul McLellan points to research showing how easy it can ... » read more

Chip Aging Accelerates


Reliability is becoming an increasingly important proof point for new chips as they are rolled out in new markets such as automotive, cloud computing and industrial IoT, but actually proving that a chip will function as expected over time is becoming much more difficult. In the past, reliability generally was considered a foundry issue. Chips developed for computers and phones were designed ... » read more

New Thermal Issues Emerge


Thermal monitoring is becoming more critical as gate density continues to increase at each new node and as chips are developed for safety critical markets such as automotive. This may sound counterintuitive because the whole point of device scaling is to increase gate density. But at 10/7 and 7/5nm, static current leakage is becoming a bigger issue, raising questions about how long [getkc id... » read more

Bridging Machine Learning’s Divide


There is a growing divide between those researching [getkc id="305" comment="machine learning"] (ML) in the cloud and those trying to perform inferencing using limited resources and power budgets. Researchers are using the most cost-effective hardware available to them, which happens to be GPUs filled with floating point arithmetic units. But this is an untenable solution for embedded infere... » read more

What Was Everywhere At CES? Voice.


I still don’t know why I’d ever want a voice-enabled washing machine, but the display in the Samsung booth with voice recognition for appliances was indicative of one of the strongest trends at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Everything is becoming voice enabled. Samsung has Bixby, Amazon has Alexa, Google has “Hey Google,” and Apple has Siri. These big-name voi... » read more

Turning Down The Voltage


Designers of large, advanced-node SoCs are grappling with a number of pressures in the quest to achieve the optimal performance and power of their designs. This has turned into a challenging balancing act between using less power, especially for consumer technologies, while also providing the same or greater performance and increased functionality. [getkc id="108" kc_name="Power"] and perfor... » read more

Signal Integrity Methodology For Double-Digit Multi-Gigabit Interfaces


As data rates for serial link interfaces such as PCI Express (PCIe) Gen 4 move into the double digits, device modeling, interconnect modeling, and analysis methodologies must continue to evolve to address the shrinking design margins and increasingly challenging compliance criteria facing today’s engineers. To mitigate risk and optimize designs, it is critical to move analysis as far upstream... » read more

Blog Review: Feb. 7


Cadence's Paul McLellan checks out why DARPA's excited about open-source IP at last year's RISC-V conference. Synopsys' Richard Solomon checks out what's new in PCIe 4.0, from the 16GT/s data rate to lane margining. Mentor's Colin Walls shares another set of tips for embedded software developers, including when to use [ ] and exception handling. Arm's Jason Andrews presents a tutorial ... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Fab tools SEMI has announced an urgent call to action to overcome the pressing semiconductor industry challenge of recruiting new talent. In a letter to the CEOs of more than 2,000 global SEMI member companies, Ajit Manocha, SEMI’s president and CEO, called on the executives to act together to attract workers and develop the workforce vital to industry growth. In addition, it is a turbu... » read more

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