The Shape Of Things To Come


By Ed Sperling The standard method of designing chips—by shrinking features and turning up the clock frequency—is running out of steam for many companies. It’s too difficult, too expensive, and without a commercially viable new lithography source it may become even more unrealistic for most applications. That certainly doesn’t mean Moore’s Law is ending, but it could become more o... » read more

Experts At The Table: The Growing Signoff Headache


By Ed Sperling Low-Power/High-Performance Engineering sat down to discuss signoff issues with Rob Aitken, an ARM fellow; Sumbal Rafiq, director of engineering at Applied Micro; Ruben Molina, product marketing director for timing signoff at Cadence; Carey Robertson, director of product marketing for Calibre extraction at Mentor Graphics; and Robert Hoogenstryd, director of marketing for design ... » read more

Tech Talk: FinFETs, FD-SOI And The Future Of SoC Design


Mary Ann White, marketing manager for Synopsys' Galaxy Implementation Platform, talks with Low-Power/High-Performance Engineering about new opportunities to reduce power and improve performance, and where the pain points will be. [youtube vid=kuJdcHIRxfU] » read more

Executive Briefing: Stacking The Odds


Open-Silicon CEO Naveed Sherwani talks with System-Level Design about progress on 2.5D and 3D stacked die, why this approach is inevitable, when it will begin and what markets will use it first. [youtube vid=mzwpgDKuIok] » read more

3D Brings Test Into Fashion


By Ann Steffora Mutschler As integral and critical as test is to the success of an SoC, it isn’t always one of those topics in semiconductor design that seems fashionable. But as Bassilios Petrakis, director of product marketing for test products at Cadence pointed out, “[Test] is not in fashion, but when we hit one of those brick walls then suddenly we have to think how we are going to... » read more

Executive Briefing: Andrew Yang


By Ed Sperling Andrew Yang, president of ANSYS subsidiary Apache Design, sat down with Low-Power/High-Performance Engineering to talk about why power is becoming so important and where the future challenges lie. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. LPHP: What’s the most important issue these days for chipmakers? Yang: According to the feedback we’ve gotten from our customer... » read more

Experts At The Table: Issues In Metrology And Inspection


By Mark LaPedus Semiconductor Manufacturing & Design sat down to discuss future metrology and inspection challenges with John Allgair, senior member of the technical staff at GlobalFoundries; Kevin Heidrich, vice president of marketing and business development at Nanometrics; Robert Newcomb, executive vice president at Qcept Technologies; and Shrinivas Shetty, vice president of marketing f... » read more

Experts At The Table: Issues In Metrology And Inspection


By Mark LaPedus Semiconductor Manufacturing & Design sat down to discuss future metrology and inspection challenges with John Allgair, senior member of the technical staff at GlobalFoundries; Kevin Heidrich, vice president of marketing and business development at Nanometrics; Robert Newcomb, executive vice president at Qcept Technologies; and Shrinivas Shetty, vice president of marketing f... » read more

Throw In The Kitchen Sink


By Ed Sperling The number of options available for reducing power and improving performance are increasing for the first time in a decade. This is good news for chipmakers. It’s far less clear who stands to benefit on the tools, IP, capital equipment and manufacturing side. Choice is always a good thing in design. It allows teams to trade off one IP block for another, based upon the needs... » read more

Hot Stuff


By Ann Steffora Mutschler When it comes to thermal modeling, which has been practiced for many years, the challenges are daunting. The good news is that approaches are emerging as challenges increased with smaller process nodes and design complexity. Viewed from a number of viewpoints—transistor, chip, package, board and system—thermal models traditionally have been created from m... » read more

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