Timing Closure At 7/5nm


Mansour Amirfathi, director of application engineering at Synopsys, examines how to determine if assumptions about design are correct, how many cycles are needed for a particular operation and why this is so complicated, and what happens if signals get out of phase. » read more

Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing


AI, machine learning Cadence says it has optimized its Tensilica HiFi digital signal processor IP to efficiently execute TensorFlow Lite for Microcontrollers, which are used in Google’s machine learning platform for edge. This means developers of AI/ML on the edge systems can now put better audio processing on edge devices with ML applications like keyword detection, audio scene detection, n... » read more

Chiplet Momentum Rising


The chiplet model is gaining momentum as an alternative to developing monolithic ASIC designs, which are becoming more complex and expensive at each node. Several companies and industry groups are rallying around the chiplet model, including AMD, Intel and TSMC. In addition, there is a new U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) initiative. The goal is to speed up time to market and reduce the cost... » read more

2020 IC Outlook: Uncertainty


After a downturn in 2019, the semiconductor and equipment industries looked promising at the start of 2020. In 2019, the downturn was primarily due to the memory markets, namely DRAM and NAND. Both DRAM and NAND saw lackluster demand and falling prices last year. At the start of 2020, though, the memory markets were beginning to recover. Unlike memory, the logic and foundry markets were s... » read more

Automotive Chip Design Workflow


Stewart Williams, senior technical marketing manager at Synopsys, talks about the consolidation of chips in a vehicle and the impact of 7/5nm on automotive SoC design, how to trade off power, performance, area and reliability, and how ISO 26262 impacts those variables. » read more

Reliability In Automotive Chips


Roland Jancke, head of department for design methodology at Fraunhofer IIS’ Engineering of Adaptive Systems Division, looks at how to ensure that chips used in cars are reliable over extended periods of use, how mission profiles vary depending upon where they are used, and why it’s important to understand what chips developed at the latest nodes can really be used for and how they will be ... » read more

Where Timing And Voltage Intersect


João Geada, chief technologist at ANSYS, talks about the limitations for power delivery networks and what processors can handle, why the current solutions to these issues are causing failures, and how voltage reduction can affect timing. » read more

The MCU Dilemma


The humble microcontroller is getting squeezed on all sides. While most of the semiconductor industry has been able to take advantage of Moore's Law, the MCU market has faltered because flash memory does not scale beyond 40nm. At the same time, new capabilities such as voice activation and richer sensor networks are requiring inference engines to be integrated for some markets. In others, re... » read more

More Data, More Problems In Automotive


The race toward increasing levels of autonomy is being hampered by competitive concerns over sharing data across the automotive supply chain. Pushing past the initial ADAS levels into full autonomy is expected to take more than a decade, but the infrastructure for those systems, and making sure all assisted and autonomous vehicles work with other vehicles, is under development today. Still, ... » read more

Ensuring Coverage In Large SoCs


Sven Beyer, product manager for design verification at OneSpin Solutions, talks about why formal technology is required to ensure coverage in some of the newest chips, how it deals with potential interactions and different use cases, and why it is gaining traction in automotive applications. » read more

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