Hybrid Memory Cube – Ready For Prime Time


With the release this week of Hybrid Memory Cube (HMC) 2.0, designers can get their hands on mature, standards-based IP that can be used to significantly scale the performance of servers and data centers. HMC offers bandwidths up to 320 GB/s – 12X that of standard memory solutions like DDR4 – while consuming significantly less power. These benefits are too significant to ignore for ASIC, So... » read more

Blog Review: Nov. 12


ARM's Eoin McCann provides a primer to software-defined networking, which uses a higher level of abstraction to create a centralized controller. This is a new twist on networking—with a bit of deja vu thrown in. Mentor's Matthew Ballance points to a perfect storm for verification—shrinking features, more layers and more embedded processors. He has some tips for how to deal with all of t... » read more

Designing For Energy Efficiency


Swiss watchmakers have nothing to worry about for the moment. As top-name companies crowd into the wearable market with full-featured watches, limits on battery life and frequent charges undoubtedly will limit their popularity. Smart watches look cool or clunky, depending upon your perspective, but none of them lasts long enough between charges to be a serious market contender. That's certai... » read more

Virtual Prototyping Takes Off


Semiconductor Engineering sat down with Barry Spotts, senior core competency FAE for fabric and tools at [getentity id="22186" comment="ARM"]; Vasan Karighattam, senior director of architecture for SoC and SSW engineering at [getentity id="22664" e_name="Open-Silicon"]; Tom De Schutter, senior product marketing manager for Virtualizer Solutions at [getentity id="22035" e_name="Synopsys"]; Larry... » read more

Efficient Software Development


In the past few years, the cost of developing software for embedded systems has exploded. Previously, hardware was the biggest chunk of that cost. These days software stresses the engineering budget. Why is that? For the past 20 years or so, of the many thoroughly standardized hardware interfaces, some have been integrated into the silicon of the micro controller thereby reducing the bill of... » read more

Blog Review: Nov. 5


Cadence's Brian Fuller zeroes in on ISO 26262, the automotive safety standard that's supposed to guard against nightmare failures in your car. Hopefully it works. They won't protect against cyber terrorism, though. Rambus' Aharon Etengoff takes a look at the challenges of connected vehicles. Mentor's J. Van Domelen looks at NASA's increased reliance on commercial partners, which has not b... » read more

The Week In Review: Design


Tools Mentor Graphics rolled out an extension to its PCB design platform that allows for synchronization of processes across multi-board systems. The new tool captures logic and system definitions for boards, cables, backplanes, cable assemblies, sensors and actuators. Cadence introduced a dynamic characterization solution for mixed signal blocks such as PLLs, data converters, high-speed tr... » read more

Are Models Holding Back New Methodologies?


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss the state of the industry for [getkc id="101" kc_name="modeling"] at abstractions above [getkc id="49" kc_name="RTL"], a factor which has delayed adoption of [getkc id="104" kn_name="virtual prototypes"] and the proliferation of system-level design and hardware/software codesign. Taking part in the discussion were Frank Schirrmeister, group director... » read more

Blog Review: Oct. 29


Ansys' Bill Vandermark uncovers the top engineering articles for the week. Check out the tractor beam in Australia that can push and pull objects and Naim's soundbar that may act like a gateway drug to bankruptcy. It may sound counterintuitive, but ARM's Jakub Lamik draws a direct link between bandwidth consumption and power consumption and explains that's the case. Samsung's Farhad Tab... » read more

The Week In Review: Design


IP Cadence rolled out a portfolio of stacked die memory verification IP to support Wide I/O-2, Hybrid Memory Cube, high-bandwidth memory, and DDR4-3DS. Included are direct memory access for read, write, save, preload and comparison of memory contents, assertions, error configurability, and a built-in address manager. ARM rolled out additions to its enterprise-class SoC interconnects for qua... » read more

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