Analog-To-Digital Conversion Is Key For Deep Space Exploration With The James Webb Space Telescope


Reflect back to your last design project. Did it have leading-edge requirements that seemed impossible at the time to fulfill? Now think about a design that needs to live in the harsh environment of space. A device that has to sip power and function flawlessly for over a decade because there is no opportunity to service it if anything goes wrong. That is the set of requirements that faced Dr. L... » read more

Foundries Expand Their Scope


By Ed Sperling & Mark LaPedus Major foundries are stepping up their offerings across a wide swath of technology nodes, specialty processes and advanced packaging—a recognition that end markets are fragmenting and that the path forward includes a mix of new and established processes. As the smart phone market flattens, there is no single "next big thing" to drive volume at the most ... » read more

Mixed-Signal Design Powers Ahead


Mixed-signal devices are at the heart of many advanced systems today because of the need to interact with the outside world, but designing and verifying these systems is getting harder. There are several reasons for this. First, almost all of these devices now have to be lower power than in the past, and in the analog space it's not as simple as just dialing down part of a block. Second, it ... » read more

Addressing Three Critical Challenges Of USB Type-C Implementation


As designers are create new products and system-on-chips (SoCs) with USB Type-C support, they need to be aware of datapath and hardware/software partitioning challenges. The SoC and system design must be partitioned to support the specification’s requirements for precision analog circuitry plus high voltage/high current switches, and Type-C management software must be partitioned to execute o... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: March 8


Configurable analog chip Researchers at Georgia Tech built a new configurable computing device, the Field-Programmable Analog Array (FPAA) SoC, that uses analog technology supported by digital components and can be built up to a hundred times smaller while using a thousand times less electrical power than comparable digital floating-gate configurable devices. Professionals familiar with F... » read more

IoT Design Challenges


Low-cost IoT designs that interface with the real world incorporate multiple design domains that individually are challenging for today’s engineers, so it’s no surprise that putting them all together creates extreme pressure on IoT design teams. The typical IoT device contains a sensor and an actuator that interface to the Internet. The sensor creates a signal based on some real-world ac... » read more

Transistor-Level Verification Returns


A few decades ago, all designers did transistor-level verification, but they were quite happy to say goodbye to it when standard cells provided isolation at the gate-level and libraries provided all of the detailed information required, such as timing. A few dedicated people continued to use the technology to provide those models and libraries and the most aggressive designs that wanted to stri... » read more

Intento Design


While the United States is where most EDA developments have come from, there have been pockets of success at various places around the world and one that has produced more than most in recent years in France. Semiconductor Engineering spoke with [getperson id=" 11759 " comment ="Ramy Iskander"], founder and CEO and Eric Laurent, worldwide sales and business development for [getentity id="22905"... » read more

China’s Demand Slowdown


It is well known that China is the largest consumer of semiconductors on a regional basis, and as China’s economic growth slows, it is interesting to take a look at where they have the most impact from a product perspective. There are a few surprises. Although the overall semiconductor average selling price in China is a fraction of the total worldwide ASP, China does not always have the lowe... » read more

Rise Of The Old Fab


Growth in the [getkc id="260" comment="Internet of Everything"], along with the beginning of a shift toward systems in package, are creating buzz in a rather unlikely place—established and well-worn process nodes where equipment is scarce, semi-functional, and difficult to maintain. In the past, moving to the next node was a sign of progress, leaving behind the trailing edge of designs to ... » read more

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