Thermal Issues Getting Worse


Making sure that smartphone you’re holding doesn’t burn your face when you make a call requires a tremendous amount of engineering effort at all levels of the design - the case, the chips, the packaging. The developers of the IP subsystems in that smartphone must adhere to very strict power and energy thresholds so the OEM putting it all together can stick to some semblance of a product des... » read more

2.5D Creeps Into SoC Designs


A decade ago top chipmakers predicted that the next frontier for SoC architectures would be the z axis, adding a third dimension to improve throughput and performance, reduce congestion around memories, and reduce the amount of energy needed to drive signals. The obvious market for this was applications processors for mobile devices, and the first companies to jump on the stacked die bandwag... » read more

What To Do With Power Models


Ask any design engineer if they want a power model, and you can guess the answer. As far as what they want to use it for, the answer will vary. When I asked Jem Davies, ARM Fellow, if OEM engineering teams want a comprehensive power model, he said, “Ideally, yes. Perfectly ideally, what they would like to have from us is a model of each individual block of our IP which plugs together in a ... » read more

Think IoT Designs Are Challenging? Try Embedded Systems In The Brain


There’s low power and then there’s low power. There are amazing applications and then there are amazing applications. Today the bleeding edge of low power design is not so much in IoT (although excellent work is being done in that space) but in medical, where the stakes are high and possible outcomes life-altering. Chet Moritz, associate professor with the University of Washington’s... » read more

Blog Review: Aug. 12


SIM cards are protected by AES-128, which is supposed to be virtually unbeatable by a brute-force attack. But there's still a weakness: Rambus' Aharon Etengoff reports on how a researcher at Jiao Tong University exploited side-channel attack techniques to crack the encryption codes protecting 3G and 4G SIM cards. After recent reports on compromised car security, auto makers are likely search... » read more

Executive Insight: Aart de Geus


Aart de Geus, chairman and co-CEO of Synopsys, sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to talk about acquisitions, software and EDA. What follows are excerpts of that interview, which was conducted in front of a live audience at DAC. SE: A lot of Synopsys' investments are moving in a new direction, namely software. Why is that becoming so important to your company? De Geus: It's not a dif... » read more

Taking Stock Of IoT Standards


Trying to make sense of [getkc id="76" comment="Internet of Things"] standards today is like opening a can of worms. Definitions are still shaking out, consortia are popping up quickly, and everyone is in a mad scramble to capture their piece of the much lauded potential of an intimately connected world of devices. With so many points to consider, security is a good place to start. It is ... » read more

Analog Evolves Into Mixed Signal


Predictions about the Internet of Things suggest this may be the new “Killer App,” something the semiconductor industry has long been looking for. Reinforcing the forecasts are television commercials from companies such as Cisco and GE touting the IoT’s impact on everything from jet engines to robots, capturing everyone’s imagination. New categories of products such as smartwatches will... » read more

Blog Review: Aug. 5


Fresh from the July 2015 Type-C InterOp Event, where USB engineers wheel a prototype on a cart from hotel room to hotel room, testing interoperability, Synopsys' Morten Christiansen says Type-C has arrived. Mentor's Colin Walls discusses the reasons to tackle embedded software development with a bottom-up approach. In their latest video, Cadence's Kishore Kasamsetty discusses why choose L... » read more

The Future Of Moore’s Law


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss the future of Moore's Law with Jan Rabaey, Donald O. Pederson distinguished professor at [getentity id="22165" comment="UC Berkeley"]; Lucio Lanza, managing director of Lanza techVentures; Subramani Kengeri, vice president of advanced technology architecture at [getentity id="22819" comment="GlobalFoundries"]; Charlie Cheng, CEO of [getentity id="2... » read more

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