Facing Off Against Growing Chip Design Complexity


The semiconductor industry continues to face incredible pressures to deliver higher levels of performance in a smaller area, with lower power demands. From high-performance systems-on-chip for 5G mobile devices and network infrastructure to the radio-frequency transceivers that enable autonomous vehicles and the industrial Internet of Things, today’s applications demand a reduced profile, pai... » read more

The March Toward Chiplets


The days of monolithic chips developed at the most advanced process nodes are rapidly dwindling. Nearly everyone working at the leading edge of design is looking toward some type of advanced packaging using discrete heterogeneous components. The challenge now is how to shift the whole chip industry into this disaggregated model. It's going to take time, effort, as well as a substantial reali... » read more

3D-IC Reliability Degrades With Increasing Temperature


The reliability of 3D-IC designs is dependent upon the ability of engineering teams to control heat, which can significantly degrade performance and accelerate circuit aging. While heat has been problematic in semiconductor design since at least 28nm, it is much more challenging to deal with inside a 3D package, where electromigration can spread to multiple chips on multiple levels. “Be... » read more

Blog Review: Dec. 14


Siemens EDA's Harry Foster checks out design and verification language adoption trends in FPGA projects, including testbench methodologies and assertion languages. Cadence's Veena Parthan finds that giving electric vehicle batteries a second life as energy storage devices can extend their useful life by 5 to 8 years, but a lack of standardization in EV batteries poses challenges. Synopsys... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


Tools, IP, design Codasip launched a new organization within the company to support the development and commercialization of technical innovations in key applications including security, functional safety, and AI/ML. "As semiconductor scaling is showing its limits, there is an obvious need for new ways of thinking. We will be working with universities, research institutes and strategic partner... » read more

Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing


Pervasive computing Swedish-based Ericsson is selling its IoT business platform to Aeris for an undisclosed amount. Ericsson will transfer its IoT Accelerator and Connected Vehicle Cloud businesses and assets to Aeris, a company that focuses on industrial, automotive, and medical IoT networks. The complexity and fragmentation of the IoT space requires more custom and hands on maintenance. Acco... » read more

IC Stresses Affect Reliability At Advanced Nodes


Thermal-induced stress is now one of the leading causes of transistor failures, and it is becoming a top focus for chipmakers as more and different kinds of chips and materials are packaged together for safety- and mission-critical applications. The causes of stress are numerous. In heterogeneous packages, it can stem from multiple components composed of different materials. “These materia... » read more

Challenges With Adaptive Control


Historically, the performance and power consumption of a system was controlled by what could be done at design time, but chips today are becoming a lot more adaptive. This has become a necessity for cutting edge nodes, but also provides a lot of additional benefits at the expense of greater complexity and verification challenges. Design margins are a tradeoff between performance and yield. C... » read more

Making Electric Vehicles Go Further With New Materials


It’s no secret that vehicle original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) are aggressively pursuing electric vehicle (EV) development. Among the headwinds they face in selling their technology to consumers are price and vehicle range. Not surprisingly, there is a direct correlation between the two — in 2021, for any EV under $40,000, the average vehicle range was 187 miles, while the lowest veh... » read more

Physics-Based Radar Modeling: Driving Toward Increased Safety


Autonomous driving is revolutionizing the global automotive industry. With every new model, cars are smarter and more capable of independently responding to external signals like lane markings, road signs, other cars and pedestrians. However, formulating a correct response via artificial intelligence depends on the flawless performance of the car’s perception systems, including radar-ba... » read more

← Older posts Newer posts →