Even With AI Inroads, Human Chip Designers Still Essential


The proliferation of AI tools seems perfectly matched to fill a talent shortage, but a closer look shows the skills do not entirely overlap. Certain parts of the EDA pipeline require human engineers, and it seems likely to stay that way for the foreseeable future. The dark art of analog design, the final word on safety-critical functional safety, high-level architectural decisions, product i... » read more

Blog Review: Oct. 29


Siemens' Ujjwal Negi and Prashant Dixit warn that while UCIe 3.0 improves performance and efficiency through higher data rates, runtime recalibration, priority sideband messaging, low-power sideband operation, and circular buffer transport, those enhancements also increase verification complexity. Cadence's Anika Sunda suggests that a unified digital thread that connects verification environ... » read more

Chip Industry Week in Review


Retaliations and countermoves leading up to planned trade talks between the U.S. and China led experts to wonder, 'Who's winning?' New activity on this front: China issued questionnaires to some U.S. semiconductor firms as part of an anti-dumping probe, demanding detailed data on sales, profit margins, logistics costs and Chinese customer names for analog chips. The probe appears aimed at ... » read more

Blog Review: Oct. 22


Cadence's Sandip Sadadiya shows what's new in the AMBA AXI Issue L protocol update, which introduces a new credit-based transport mechanism that replaces the traditional VALID/READY handshake, along with improved flow control mechanisms. Siemens' Farhad Ahmed highlights the growing need to do clock domain crossing (CDC) and reset domain crossing (RDC) analysis in a hierarchical way and intro... » read more

Chip Industry Week in Review


The Open Compute Project (OCP) Summit kicked off this week in San Jose, dominated by open standards, massive scaling of AI infrastructure, chiplet architectures, and energy-efficiency. Among the highlights: An initiative to standardize data center infrastructure and advance Ethernet for AI. New contributions to OCP's Open Chiplet Economy ecosystem, including Arm's new Foundation Chiplet... » read more

Integrated Modular Firmware Solutions: A Vital Component Of Custom Silicon Chiplet Architecture Designs


By Marc Meunier and Srini Narayana The shift from monolithic SoC designs to chiplet-based architecture isn’t just a packaging innovation. It’s a fundamental rethinking of how custom silicon is designed, manufactured, and deployed. This transition is driven by the growing impracticality of scaling large monolithic dies at advanced nodes. As die sizes increase, so do the costs, yield ri... » read more

Startup Tips To Get From Seed Funding To Series A, B, C


Startups are often created by experienced engineers who figure out how to solve a technical problem they are dealing with at work, or by PhD candidates in research labs before they have even started their first full-time job. Either way, getting seed money to the tune of a few million dollars is relatively easy compared to securing further rounds of funding and achieving the company’s exit go... » read more

Why Data-Over-Sound Is An Integral Part Of Any IoT Engineer’s Toolbox


Data-over-sound technology such as Chirp presents a compelling solution for many device-to-device connectivity applications, particularly for use cases that require frictionless, low cost connectivity with nearby devices. Download this white paper to: Understand the fundamental concepts and benefits of data-over-sound connectivity Explore the key application areas within the Internet... » read more

Blog Review: Oct. 8


Siemens' Azat Latypov presents a stochastic-aware optical proximity correction strategy that demonstrated an order-of-magnitude reduction in the probability of stochastic defects for both SRAM and logic designs, sacrificing minor edge placement error in return for much lower failure rates. Cadence's Dimitry Pavlovsky introduces the AMBA CHI Chip-to-Chip (C2C) protocol, which extends the CHI ... » read more

Chip Industry Startup Funding: Q3 2025


The third quarter of 2025 was dominated by massive rounds for companies developing AI chips and quantum computers. Over $2.5 billion went to AI, with wafer-scale chip maker Cerebras leading the pack with a $1.1 billion raise. While several edge AI companies received backing, the quarter saw a marked shift towards solutions for the data center as firms seek to reduce the cost and power consumpti... » read more

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