Redefining Expectations For Test


New and rapidly expanding applications, such as artificial intelligence and automotive, are increasing in design size and complexity. These evolving market segments require unprecedented levels of quality and long-term reliability, which has created a fundamental shift in both the importance and need for integration of advanced semiconductor test. Synopsys unveiled a new family of test products... » read more

Blog Review: April 3


Synopsys' Taylor Armerding contends that as the IoT becomes more ubiquitous, the threat of cyber-physical attacks is rising, with the potential for a domino effect if even simple devices are compromised in large enough quantities. Mentor's Colin Walls considers the move away from programming on bare metal with the rise of drivers and RTOSes and when it makes sense to still use the old method... » read more

Big Shift In Multi-Core Design


Hardware and software engineers have a long history of working independently of each other, but that insular behavior is changing in emerging areas such as AI, machine learning and automotive as the emphasis shifts to the system level. As these new markets consume more semiconductor content, they are having a big impact on the overall design process. The starting point in many of these desig... » read more

Heterogeneous Design Creating Havoc With Firmware Versions


Adding different kinds of processing elements into chips is creating system-level incompatibilities because of sometimes necessary, but usually uncoordinated, firmware updates from multiple vendors. In the past, firmware typically was synchronized with other firmware and the chip was verified and debugged. But this becomes much more difficult when multiple heterogeneous processing elements a... » read more

Week in Review: IoT, Security, Auto


Internet of Things Organizers for the Internet of Things World 2019 conference, coming up on May 13-16 in Santa Clara, Calif., surveyed more than 100 IoT leaders in various industries. Implementation (34%) and security (25%) were the highest concerns for the respondents. Those were followed by initial purchase (17%), scalability (10%), business buy-in (8%), and upkeep costs (3%). Two-thirds of... » read more

Utilizing More Data To Improve Chip Design


Just about every step of the IC tool flow generates some amount of data. But certain steps generate a mind-boggling amount of data, not all of which is of equal value. The challenge is figuring out what's important for which parts of the design flow. That determines what to extract and loop back to engineers, and when that needs to be done in order to improve the reliability of increasingly com... » read more

The Automation Of AI


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss the role that EDA has in automating artificial intelligence and machine learning with Doug Letcher, president and CEO of Metrics; Daniel Hansson, CEO of Verifyter; Harry Foster, chief scientist verification for Mentor, a Siemens Business; Larry Melling, product management director for Cadence; Manish Pandey, Synopsys fellow; and Raik Brinkmann, CEO ... » read more

Week in Review: IoT, Security, Auto


Internet of Things Second-tier cities in the U.S. that can’t attract projects like the Amazon HQ2 are welcoming the testing of autonomous vehicles, smart city technology, and advanced surveillance techniques, this analysis notes. What do they get in return? Much of the time, little or nothing. And bad things can happen. People have been throwing objects at Waymo vehicles in Chandler, Ariz., ... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Mar. 19


Explainable AI Researchers from Technische Universität Berlin (TU Berlin), Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute (HHI), and Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) propose a pair of algorithms to help determine how AI systems reach their conclusions. Explainable AI is an important step towards practical applications, argued Klaus-Robert Müller, Professor for Machine Learning at... » read more

The Growing Challenge Of Thermal Guard-Banding


Guard-banding for heat is becoming more difficult as chips are used across a variety of new and existing applications, forcing chipmakers to architect their way through increasingly complex interactions. Chips are designed to operate at certain temperatures, and it is common practice to develop designs with some margin to ensure correct functionality and performance throughout the operat... » read more

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