Week In Review: Design, Low Power


Synopsys acquired Qualtera, a provider of big data analytics for semiconductor test and manufacturing. Based in Montpellier, France and founded in 2010, Qualtera's Silicondash platform provides both off-line and in-line modules for data analytics, visualization, simulation, and modeling to allow for development of control strategies. Combined with Synopsys' TestMAX test automation solution, the... » read more

Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing


Edge, cloud, data center Programmable logic company Efinix used Cadence’s Digital Full Flow to finish Efinix’s Trion FPGA family for edge computing, AI/ML and vision processing applications, according to a press release. Last week Efinix also announced three software defined SoCs based on the RISC-V core. The SoCs are optimized to the Trion FPGAs. AI, machine learning Amazon will tempo... » read more

ESD Requirements Are Changing


Standards for specifying a chip’s ability to withstand electrostatic discharge (ESD) are changing – in some cases, getting tougher, and in others, easing up. ESD protection has been on a path from a one-size-fits-all approach to one where a signal’s usage helps to determine what kind of protection it should get. Protecting chips from ESD damage has been a longstanding part of IC design... » read more

Preventing Line Change Disruptions With Digital Twins


During times of crisis, companies can struggle to meet the demand for everyday necessities. Companies need to increase uptime without risking equipment or product quality. During times of crisis, like the COVID-19 pandemic, manufacturing companies can struggle to meet the demand of everyday necessities. We’ve seen this happen in real-time with the shortages of personal protective equipm... » read more

New Approaches For Dealing With Thermal Problems


New thermal monitoring, simulation and analysis techniques are beginning to coalesce in chips developed at leading-edge nodes and in advanced packages in order to keep those devices running at optimal temperatures. This is particularly important in applications such as AI, automotive, data centers and 5G. Heat can kill a chip, but it also can cause more subtle effects such as premature aging... » read more

How To Design User Equipment Antenna Systems For 5G Wireless Networks


Next-generation cellular wireless communications will enable numerous innovative, cutting-edge technologies and products. The combination of millimeter-wave (mm-wave) and microwave bands accompanied by advanced spatial multiplexing techniques such as massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) will form the backbone of a new cellular technology called 5G. The evolution to 5G promises low late... » read more

Fundamental Changes In Economics Of Chip Security


Protecting chips from cyberattacks is becoming more difficult, more expensive and much more resource-intensive, but it also is becoming increasingly necessary as some of those chips end up in mission-critical servers and in safety-critical applications such as automotive. Security has been on the semiconductor industry's radar for at least the past several years, despite spotty progress and ... » read more

Blog Review: June 10


Cadence's Paul McLellan considers the issues around benchmarking neural networks running on different hardware and challenges in comparing designs. Mentor's Shivani Joshi points to a few of the different types of jitter and some key factors to review when trying to limit jitter. Synopsys' Fred Bals notes that while the National Vulnerability Database is a good source for information on public... » read more

Making Silicon Photonics Chips More Reliable


Silicon photonics has the ability to dramatically improve on-die and chip-to-chip communication within a package at extremely low power, but ensuring that signal integrity remains consistent over time isn't so simple. While this technology has been used commercially for at least the past decade, it never has achieved mainstream status. That's mostly due to the fact that Moore's Law scaling h... » read more

Conflicting Demands At The Edge


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to define what the edge will look like with Jeff DeAngelis, managing director of the Industrial and Healthcare Business Unit at Maxim Integrated; Norman Chang, chief technologist at Ansys; Andrew Grant, senior director of artificial intelligence at Imagination Technologies; Thomas Ensergueix, senior director of the automotive and IoT line of business at Arm; V... » read more

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