Blog Review: March 3


Siemens EDA's Ray Salemi considers incrementalism in engineering, the transition from drawing circuits to writing RTL, and the next big leap of using proxy-driven testbenches written in Python. Cadence's Shyam Sharma looks at key changes from LPDDR5 in the LPDDR5X SDRAM standard, which extends clock frequencies to include 937MHz and 1066MHz resulting in max data rates of 7500MT/s and 8533 MT... » read more

Chiplets For The Masses


Chiplets are a compelling technology, but so far they are available only to a select few players in the industry. That's changing, and the industry has taken little steps to get there, but timing for when you will be able to buy a chiplet to integrate into your system remains uncertain. While new fabrication nodes continue to be developed, scaling is coming to an end, be it for physical or e... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


Cadence completed the acquisition of NUMECA International, a provider of computational fluid dynamics (CFD), mesh generation, multi-physics simulation, and optimization solutions for industries including aerospace, automotive, industrial, and marine. Founded in 1993 as a spin-off of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), NUMECA was based in Brussels, Belgium. Terms of the deal were not disclosed... » read more

Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing


Automotive/Mobility Toyota Motor Corporation developed a hydrogen fuel cell (FC) system packaged in a compact module. Toyota plans to start selling it in the spring of 2021. The module can be used by other companies developing products powered by fuel cells. Micron is sampling an ASIL D level LPDDR5. The low-power memory is qualified for automotive safety applications. Samsung Foundry ce... » read more

Firmware Skills Shortage


Good hardware without good software is a waste of silicon, but with so many new processors and accelerator architectures being created, and so many new skills required, companies are finding it hard to hire enough engineers with low-level software expertise to satisfy the demand. Writing compilers, mappers and optimization software does not have the same level of pizazz as developing new AI ... » read more

Blog Review: Feb. 24


Siemens EDA's Harry Foster checks out the efficiency and effectiveness of verification on ASIC and IC designs with a look at how many projects meet the original schedule, the number of required spins, and classification of functional bugs. Cadence's Paul McLellan listens in as Philippe Magarshack of ST Microelectronics on how the company uses massive amounts of data generated by its fabs to ... » read more

Brazil Paves New Semiconductor Path


After struggling to get its semiconductor industry off the ground for the last several years, Brazil finally may have found its place in the market with the development of IC design services, memory modules and packaging. Brazil exists well under the radar when it comes to semiconductors. But with little or no fanfare, the nation over the years has been trying to build fabs, assemble chips a... » read more

Breaking The 2nm Barrier


Chipmakers continue to make advancements with transistor technologies at the latest process nodes, but the interconnects within these structures are struggling to keep pace. The chip industry is working on several technologies to solve the interconnect bottleneck, but many of those solutions are still in R&D and may not appear for some time — possibly not until 2nm, which is expected t... » read more

FeFETs Bring Promise And Challenges


Ferroelectric FETs (FeFETs) and memory (FeRAM) are generating high levels of interest in the research community. Based on a physical mechanism that hasn’t yet been commercially exploited, they join the other interesting new physics ideas that are in various stages of commercialization. “FeRAM is very promising, but it's like all promising memory technologies — it takes a while to get b... » read more

Blog Review: Feb. 17


In a video, Synopsys' Tim Mackey warns that IoT device manufacturers are dealing with a serious challenge when it comes to security and points to the types of software threats that could impact IoT products. Siemens' Paul van Straten finds that the rise in vehicle complexity and intensified global competition means traditional automotive OEMs will need to explore new approaches to vehicle de... » read more

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