Blog Review: September 13


Siemens' Todd Westerhoff highlights the importance of signal integrity analysis in PCB design, challenges as simulation tools have become more sophisticated and difficult to use, and best practices like starting with a simple analysis problem. Synopsys' Rita Horner, Shekhar Kapoor, and William Ruby note that the power and thermal profiles of multi-die systems for HPC and the data center shou... » read more

Fab And Field Data Transforming Manufacturing Processes


The ability to capture, process, and analyze data in the field is transforming semiconductor metrology and testing, providing invaluable insight into a product's performance in real-time and under real-world conditions and use cases. Historically, data that encapsulates parameters such as power consumption, temperature, voltages, currents, timing, and other characteristics, was confined to d... » read more

Customizing IC Test To Improve Yield And Reliability


Testing the performance and power of semiconductors as they come off the production line is beginning to shift left in the fab, reversing a long-standing trend of assessing chips just prior to shipping. While this may sound straightforward, it's a difficult challenge which, if successful, will have broad implications for the entire design-through-manufacturing flow. Manufacturers typically g... » read more

Automotive Safety Requires PVT Monitoring IP Within Semiconductor ICs


The modern automobile, especially with the move toward more electrification, presents huge challenges to the designers of vehicular electronics. Gone are the days of mechanical issues and oil changes being primary concerns. Today’s automobile has a high number of semiconductor chips performing functions for self-driving autonomous systems, advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), connectivi... » read more

Synopsys Timing Constraints Manager: Constraint Verification


Constraint verification refers to the verification of the contents of an SDC file to flag situations where the specified constraints are either incorrect, or incomplete, both of which, if not addressed, could result in silicon failure. The key to constraint verification is the ability to flag real issues without swamping an engineer with noise: issues that upon designer review result in no chan... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


By Liz Allan, Jesse Allen, and Karen Heyman Global semiconductor equipment billings dipped 2% year-over-year to US$25.8 billion in Q2, and slipped 4% compared with Q1, according to SEMI. Similarly, the top 10 semiconductor foundries reported a 1.1% quarterly-over-quarter revenue decline in Q2. A rebound is anticipated in Q3, according to TrendForce. Synopsys extended its AI-driven EDA ... » read more

The Threat Of Supply Chain Insecurity


Concerns about counterfeit chips are growing as more chips are deployed in safety- and mission-critical applications, prompting better traceability and new and inexpensive solutions that can determine if chips are new or used. But some counterfeit chips still slip through, and the problem gets worse wherever there are shortages. Estimates vary widely for how much counterfeiting costs in term... » read more

Designing Vehicles Virtually


The shift toward software-defined vehicles (SDVs), electric vehicles (EVs), and ultimately autonomous vehicles (AVs) is proving the value and exposing the weaknesses in simulating individual components and complete vehicles. The ability to model this intensely complex maze of real-world interactions and possible scenarios is improving, and it's happening faster than comparable road-testing o... » read more

Why The SOAFEE Project Is Integral For The Design Of Connected Vehicles


The Scalable Open Architecture for Embedded Edge (SOAFEE) project, of which Synopsys is a voting member, is defined by automakers, semiconductor suppliers, open-source and independent software vendors, and cloud technology leaders. The effort builds on technologies that define standard boot and security requirements for the Arm architecture, while adding a cloud-native development and deployme... » read more

Setting Standards For The Chip Industry


For all the advances in semiconductor design, and the astonishing scales on which the industry now works, when it comes to standards committee meetings, not much has changed. Advice from a 91-year-old retired engineer can sound surprisingly like advice from those active today. Standards were then, and continue to be, a mix of technical compromises and corporate politics, as well as passionate a... » read more

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