Less Food, More Thought


A trillion "things" are expected to be connected to the Internet sometime in the next decade. No matter how power-efficient these things are, they probably will require enough coin-sized lithium batteries to drain the world's supply of element No. 3 on the Periodic Table. They also will increase the demand for power everywhere, and that's even before tacking on electric vehicles, the edge, robo... » read more

More Data, More Processing, More Chips


Simon Segars, CEO of Arm, sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to talk about the impact of heterogeneous computing and new packaging approaches on IP, the need for more security, and how 5G and the edge will impact compute architectures and the chip industry. SE: There are a whole bunch of new markets opening up. How does Arm plan to tackle those? Segars: Luckily for us, we can design ... » read more

ML, Edge Drive IP To Outperform Broader Chip Market


The market for third-party semiconductor IP is surging, spurred by the need for more specific capabilities across a wide variety of markets. While the IP industry is not immune to steep market declines in semiconductor industry, it does have more built-in resilience than other parts of the industry. Case in point: The top 15 semiconductor suppliers were hit with an 18% decline in 2019 first-... » read more

Open ISAs Gaining Traction


Open instruction set architectures are starting to gain a foothold, often in combination with other processors, as chipmakers begin to add more specialized compute elements and more flexibility into their designs. There are a number of these open ISAs available today, including Power, MIPS, and RISC-V, and there are a number of permutations and tools available for sale based on those archite... » read more

Why Data Is So Difficult To Protect In AI Chips


Experts at the Table: Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss a wide range of hardware security issues and possible solutions with Norman Chang, chief technologist for the Semiconductor Business Unit at ANSYS; Helena Handschuh, fellow at Rambus, and Mike Borza, principal security technologist at Synopsys. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. The first part of this discussion ca... » read more

EDA Revenue Up 6.6% For Q2


Highlighted by double digit growth in semiconductor IP and the Asia/Pacific region, EDA industry revenue increased 6.6% for Q2 2019 to $2,472.1 million, compared to $2,318.5 million in Q2 2018, according to the ESD Alliance Market Statistics Service. The four-quarters moving average, which compares the most recent four quarters to the prior four quarters, increased by 6%, which represented a... » read more

Machine Learning Inferencing At The Edge


Ian Bratt, fellow in Arm's machine learning group, talks about why machine learning inferencing at the edge is so difficult, what are the tradeoffs, how to optimize data movement, how to accelerate that movement, and how it differs from developing other types of processors. » read more

The Race For Better Computational Software


Anirudh Devgan, president of Cadence, sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to talk about computational software, why it's so critical at the edge and in AI systems, and where the big changes are across the semiconductor industry. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: There is no consistent approach to how data will be processed at the edge, in part because there is no consis... » read more

IP Security In FPGAs


Quinn Jacobson, strategic architect at Achronix, talks about security in FPGAs, including how to prevent reverse engineering of IP, how to make sure the design is authentic, and how to limit access to IP in transit and in the chip. » read more

IP’s Growing Impact On Yield And Reliability


Chipmakers are finding it increasingly difficult to achieve first-pass silicon with design IP sourced internally and from different IP providers, and especially with configurable IP. Utilizing poorly qualified IP and waiting for issues to appear during the design-to-verification phase just before tape-out can pose high risks for design houses and foundries alike in terms of cost and time to... » read more

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