How The Semiconductor Ecosystem Is Responding To Its Global Challenges


The semiconductor industry is changing rapidly, with government support for re-shoring capacity creating new interplay among resources in Asia, the U.S., and Europe—even as the industry develops and sustains new technologies like HBM and heterogeneous integration. Geopolitical factors such as the CHIPS (Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors for America) Act, the scarcity of s... » read more

Managing Complexity And A Left Shift: Reconfigurable Mixed-Signal Circuits For Complex Integrated Systems


By Björn Zeugmann and Benjamin Prautsch The chip market is growing worldwide; it’s projected to nearly double by 2030 to over one trillion dollars. Most of this market is made up of digital functions in the form of logic, microprocessors, and memory. Although analog ICs account for only around 15% of the total, they are key components for overall systems and are therefore almost always pr... » read more

Thermal Challenges Multiply In Automotive, Embedded Devices


Embedding chips into stacked-die assemblies is creating thermal dissipation challenges that can reduce the reliability and lifespan of these devices, a growing problem as chipmakers begin cramming chiplets into advanced packages with thinner substrates between them. In the past, nearly all of these complex designs were used in tightly controlled environments, such as a large data center, whe... » read more

Digital Twins Gaining Traction In Complex Designs


The integration of heterogeneous chiplets into an advanced package, coupled with the increasing digitalization of multiple industry segments, is pushing digital twins to the forefront of design. The challenge in these complex assemblies is figuring out the potential tradeoffs between different chiplets, different assembly approaches, and to be able to do it quickly enough to still hit market... » read more

Data Coherence Across Silos And Hierarchy


Shift left has become a rallying cry for the chip design industry, but unless coherent data can flow between the groups being impacted, the value may not be as great as expected. Shift left is a term that encompasses attempts to bring analysis and decision-making forward in the development process. The earlier an issue can be found, the less of a problem it ultimately becomes. But in many ca... » read more

The 3D-IC Multiphysics Challenge Dictates A Shift-Left Strategy


As the industry marches forward in a 3D-IC centric design approach (figure 1), we are facing a new problem. Sometimes referred to as “electro-thermal” or “electro-thermo-mechanical,” it really is the confluence of multiple forms of physics exerting impacts on both the physical manufacture and structure of these multi-die designs and their electrical behavior. Fig. 1: Illustration... » read more

Integrating Energy Efficiency Considerations Into Your Design From The Beginning


Data center networking is responsible for consuming about 1% of the global electricity supply. With the advent and integration of AI into various sectors, the pressure on both hardware and software infrastructures, necessitated by neural networks and extensive language models, is expected to increase significantly. The burgeoning energy consumption by hyperscale data centers emerges as an ur... » read more

A New Strategy For Successful Block/Chip Design-Stage Verification


Achieving efficiency in integrated circuit (IC) design while maintaining design quality is not just a goal, but a necessity. Designers constantly strive to strike a balance between ever-tightening time-to-market constraints and the finite resources at their disposal, while ensuring the quality of their designs remains uncompromised. Traditionally, IC design flows have been depicted as a linear ... » read more

Maximizing Efficiency And Productivity: The Benefits Of Shift Left Verification For IP Designers


Intellectual property (IP) designers play a crucial role by creating reusable components that form the building blocks of larger integrated circuit (IC) designs. These components, whether developed in-house or acquired from specialized IP design companies, are essential for providing core functionality such as memory and standard libraries. However, designing and verifying IP is a complex and d... » read more

Companies That Embrace Digital Transformation Have More Resilient Design And Supply Chains


Digital transformation has evolved quickly from a conceptual phase to a semiconductor industry change agent. The rapid take up of AI-enhanced product development is only accelerating this transformation and is further influenced by two connected trends: The movement of Moore’s Law from transistor scaling to system-level scaling, and the relatively recent redistribution of the global electroni... » read more

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