Blog Review: Nov. 14


Mentor's Jin Hou and Joe Hupcey III explain two fundamental characteristics of formal analysis that simplify things for the formal algorithm and provide better wall clock run time and memory usage performance. Cadence's Paul McLellan shares highlights from five presentations all discussing what's behind AI's movement to edge devices, the vast amount of investment going into the area, and whe... » read more

Why Chips Die


Semiconductor devices contain hundreds of millions of transistors operating at extreme temperatures and in hostile environments, so it should come as no surprise that many of these devices fail to operate as expected or have a finite lifetime. Some devices never make it out of the lab and many others die in the fab. It is hoped that most devices released into products will survive until they be... » read more

Week in Review: IoT, Security, Auto


Internet of Things What’s better than a 5G network? How about a local, private 5G network? The Industrial Internet of Things may drive the development of such networks. Of course, 5G cellular communications technology is still being worked out worldwide. BMW, Daimler, and Volkswagen are looking ahead to the future; those automotive manufacturers notified Germany’s Federal Network Agency th... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


M&A SMIT Holdings acquired S2C, a provider of FPGA prototyping hardware and software as well as interfaces and accessories, for $19 million, plus up to US$2 million in milestone based payments to the key management team. S2C was founded in 2003. SMIT, based in Hong Kong, makes pay TV broadcasting access and mobile point-of-sale payment systems for the Chinese market. Tools & IP Syn... » read more

Design For Advanced Packaging


Advanced packaging techniques are viewed as either a replacement for Moore's Law scaling, or a way of augmenting it. But there is a big gap between the extensive work done to prove these devices can be manufactured with sufficient yield and the amount of attention being paid to the demands advanced packaging has on the design and verification flows. Not all advanced packaging places the same... » read more

Next-Generation Ethernet Interconnects For 400G Hyperscale Data Centers


The need for higher bandwidth with efficient connectivity increases as hyperscale data centers transition to faster, flatter, and more scalable network architectures, such as the 2-tier leaf-spine, as seen in Figure 1. The leaf-spine architecture requires massive interconnects as each leaf switch fans-out to every spine switch, maximizing connectivity between servers. Hardware accelerators, art... » read more

Fusion Compiler: Comprehensive RTL-to-GDSII Implementation System


The semiconductor industry is going through a renaissance period with waves of technological advancements and innovation. There has been a significant uptick in demand for silicon in recent years, driven by market sectors including automotive, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and internet of things (IoT) that have their own unique mix of design and implementation requirements. The mobi... » read more

Blog Review: Nov. 7


Arm's Shidhartha Das looks into maximizing the benefits of power delivery networks and explains a non-intrusive technique using an on-chip digital storage oscilloscope that can directly sample the power-rails to probe potential runtime bugs due to power delivery weaknesses. Synopsys' Snigdha Dua argues that scrambling is one of the most important features introduced in HDMI 2.0 and takes a l... » read more

Week in Review: IoT, Security, Auto


Internet of Things The expensive implementation of 5G cellular communications may be justified by the Internet of Things, writes Hatem Zeine, founder and chief technology officer of Ossia, a developer of wireless power technology. Bain & Company forecasts the B2B IoT market will be worth more than $300 billion by 2020. IDC predicts overall IoT spending will hit $1.2 trillion in 2022. Mi... » read more

The Week In Review: Design


M&A GlobalFoundries formed Avera Semiconductor, a wholly-owned subsidiary focused on custom ASIC designs. While Avera will use its relationship with GF for 14/12nm and more mature technologies, it has a foundry partnership lined up for 7nm. The new company's IP portfolio includes high-speed SerDes, high-performance embedded TCAMs, ARM cores and performance and density-optimized embedded SR... » read more

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