tag: SPICE

Why Analog Designs Fail
By Brian Bailey - 14 Feb, 2019 - Comments: 2

The gap between analog and digital reliability is growing, and digital designs appear to be winning. Reports show that analog content causes the most test failures and contributes significantly more than digital to field returns. The causes aren't always obvious, though. Some of it is due to the maturity of analog design and verification. While great strides have been made in digital circuit... » read more

EDA Grabs Bigger Slice Of Chip Market
By Brian Bailey - 31 Jan, 2019 - Comments: 0

EDA revenues have been a fairly constant percentage of semiconductor revenues, but that may change in 2019. With new customers creating demand, and some traditional customers shifting focus from advanced nodes, the various branches of the EDA tool industry may be where sticky technical problems are solved. IC manufacturing, packaging and development tools all are finding new ways to handle t... » read more

The Process Design Kit: Protecting Design Know-How
By John Ferguson - 08 Nov, 2018 - Comments: 2

Once upon a time, integrated circuits (ICs) were built by the same companies that designed them. The design of an IC was tightly integrated with the manufacturing processes available within each company. In these days, when designs contained hundreds of transistors, companies modeled each feature in an IC at a first principles level, meaning each transistor or fundamental device was analyzed an... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power
By Jesse Allen - 26 Oct, 2018 - Comments: 0

Tools OneSpin launched a formal verification tool that integrates with all major simulators, coverage databases and viewers, and chip design verification planning tools to provide a comprehensive view of verification progress. Comprised of two new formal apps, it can identify unreachable coverage points and provide them to the simulator to reduce wasted effort. Synopsys released the latest ... » read more

Five DAC Keynotes
By Brian Bailey - 17 Jul, 2018 - Comments: 0

The ending of Moore's Law may be about to create a new golden age for design, especially one fueled by artificial intelligence and machine learning. But design will become task-, application- and domain-specific, and will require that we think about the lifecycle of the products in a different way. In the future, we also will have to design for augmentation of experience, not just automation... » read more

The Week In Review: Design
By Jesse Allen - 11 May, 2018 - Comments: 0

M&A IoT-focused memory chipmaker Adesto Technologies acquired S3 Semiconductors, a provider of mixed-signal and RF ASICs and IP. Based in Ireland, S3 Semiconductors was founded in 1986. S3 Semiconductors will become a business unit of Adesto and will continue to operate under its current model in the $35 million deal. S3 Semiconductor's parent company, S3 Group, will continue as a separate... » read more

New Issues In Advanced Packaging
By Ann Mutschler - 08 Mar, 2018 - Comments: 1

Advanced packaging is gaining in popularity as the cost and complexity of integrating everything onto a planar SoC becomes more difficult and costly at each new node, but ensuring that these packaged die function properly and yield sufficiently isn't so simple. There are a number of factors that are tilting more of the the semiconductor industry toward advanced [getkc id="27" kc_name="packag... » read more

How Reliable Are FinFETs?
By Ann Mutschler - 16 Aug, 2017 - Comments: 1

Stringent safety requirements in the automotive and industrial sectors are forcing chipmakers to re-examine a number of factors that can impact reliability over the lifespan of a device. Many of these concerns are not new. Electrical overstress (EOS), electrostatic discharge (ESD) and [getkc id="160" kc_name="electromigration"] (EM) are well understood, and have been addressed by EDA tools f... » read more

Modeling On-Chip Variation At 10/7nm
By Ann Mutschler - 14 Jun, 2017 - Comments: 1

Simulation, a workhorse tool for semiconductor design, is running out of steam at 10/7nm. It is falling behind on chips with huge gate counts and an enormous number of possible interactions between all the different functions that are being crammed onto a die. At simulation's root is some form of SPICE, which has served as its underpinnings ever since SPICE was first published 44 years ago. ... » read more

Power Challenges At 10nm And Below
By Ann Mutschler - 11 May, 2017 - Comments: 1

Current density is becoming much more problematic at 10nm and beyond, increasing the amount of power management that needs to be incorporated into each chip and boosting both design costs and time to market. Current per unit of area has been rising since 90nm, forcing design teams to leverage a number of power-related strategies such as [getkc id="143" kc_name="dynamic voltage and frequency... » read more

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