On-Chip Clock And Process Monitoring Using STAR Hierarchical System’s Measurement Unit


Functional safety is one of the most critical priorities for system-on-chips (SoCs) that are involved in automotive, aerospace and industrial applications. These requirements are driven by standards such as ISO 26262 and are the backbone of the design and testing of automotive ICs. Synopsys’ STAR Hierarchical System’s Measurement Unit helps ensure the accuracy of on-chip clock frequency and... » read more

Enabling Automotive Design


Falling automotive electronics prices, propelled by advances in chip manufacturing and innovations on the design side, are driving a whole new level of demand across the automotive industry. Innovations that were introduced at the luxury end of the car market over the past couple years already are being implemented in more standard vehicles. The single biggest driver of change in the automo... » read more

Big Challenges, Changes For Debug


By Ann Steffora Mutschler & Ed Sperling Debugging a chip always has been difficult, but the problem is getting worse at 7nm and 5nm. The number of corner cases is exploding as complexity rises, and some bugs are not even on anyone's radar until well after devices are already in use by end customers. An estimated 39% of verification engineering time is spent on debugging activities the... » read more

High-Performance 7nm IP Verification With The AFS Platform At Silicon Creations


While there are many benefits to migrating to smaller process geometries, such as lower power and higher performance, the increased design complexity places an even higher burden on fast and efficient simulation technology. In addition, fast and accurate resistor/capacitor (RC) extraction is becoming increasingly important. Interconnect resistance is an increasing percentage of the total path r... » read more

Blog Review: Nov. 29


ANSYS' Robert Harwood offers a reminder that autonomous and assisted driving technology are still very much works in progress, and flawed ones at that. It will take an estimated 5 billion to 10 billion road miles to effectively train self-driving algorithms. So far, Google has logged about 3.5 million miles. Along the same lines, Mentor's Paul Johnston takes a look at the electric car market... » read more

Five Trends In IC Packaging


At one time, chip packaging was an afterthought. Chipmakers were more worried about IC design. Packaging was considered a mere commodity, which was simply used to house the design. More recently, though, chip packaging has become a hot topic. The IC design is still important, but packaging is a key part of the solution. In fact, the industry can go down two paths. The traditional way is t... » read more

What’s Next For Atomic Layer Etch?


After years in R&D, several fab tool vendors last year finally began to ship systems based a next-generation technology called atomic layer etch (ALE). [getkc id="284" kc_name="ALE"] is is moving into 16/14nm, but it will play a big role at 10/7nm and beyond. The industry also is working on the next wave of ALE technology for advanced logic and memory production. Used by chipmakers fo... » read more

Overlay Challenges On The Rise


The overlay metrology equipment market is heating up at advanced nodes as the number of masking layers grows and the size of the features that need to be aligned continue to shrink. Both ASML and KLA-Tencor recently introduced new [getkc id="307" kc_name="overlay"] metrology systems, seeking to address the increasing precision required for lines, cuts and other features on each layer. At 10/... » read more

Tech Talk: Near-Threshold Power


Lauri Koskinen, CTO and founder of Minima Processor, and Ron Moore, vice president of marketing at ARM, talk about near-threshold computing, dynamic power and margining, and how these techniques can extend battery life and reduce energy consumption. https://youtu.be/BhiNFe4NYQU » read more

Lots Of Little Knobs For Power


Dynamic power is becoming a much bigger worry at new nodes as more finFETs are packed on a die and wires shrink to the point where resistance and capacitance become first-order effects. Chipmakers began seeing dynamic power density issues with the first generation of [getkc id="185" kc_name="finFETs"]. While the 3D transistor structures reduced leakage current by providing better gate contro... » read more

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