Week In Review: Design, Low Power


Infineon Technologies acquired Syntronixs Asia, which specializes in precision electroplating, a key process in the assembly process of semiconductors. Syntronixs Asia has a workforce of more than 500 people and has been a major service provider for Infineon since 2009. “Through this acquisition, we have made another important step to strengthen the resilience of our supply chain,” said Tho... » read more

Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing


Automotive The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sued Nvidia to block the company’s $40 billion acquisition of Arm. The FTC said in a press statement that “the proposed vertical deal would give one of the largest chip companies control over the computing technology and designs that rival firms rely on to develop their own competing chips. … the combined firm would have the means and in... » read more

Why It’s So Difficult — And Costly — To Secure Chips


Rising concerns about the security of chips used in everything from cars to data centers are driving up the cost and complexity of electronic systems in a variety of ways, some obvious and others less so. Until very recently, semiconductor security was viewed more as a theoretical threat than a real one. Governments certainly worried about adversaries taking control of secure systems through... » read more

Blog Review: Dec. 1


Synopsys' Mike Gianfagna points to three events that created a fundamental shift in product development that has enabled rapid introduction of a wide range of new products. Siemens' Sagi Reuven considers some key challenges facing the supply chain and the impact on electronics manufacturers, from rising shipping costs to shortages of raw materials and transportation labor. Cadence's Frank... » read more

Blog Review: Nov. 24


Cadence's Paul McLellan introduces the theory and practice of datapath formal verification and explores two use cases of dot-product accumulate systolic design and hashing design. Siemens EDA's Rich Edelman shows that constructing an in-order UVM scoreboard doesn't have to be a difficult or complex task, and certainly simpler than replacing a laptop's keyboard. Synopsys' Gordon Cooper con... » read more

Gaps In The AI Debug Process


When an AI algorithm is deployed in the field and gives an unexpected result, it's often not clear whether that result is correct. So what happened? Was it wrong? And if so, what caused the error? These are often not simple questions to answer. Moreover, as with all verification problems, the only way to get to the root cause is to break the problem down into manageable pieces. The semico... » read more

Towards Decarbonization: Keeping Electronics Energy Consumption In Check


The International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS) roadmap famously said in 2001 that "cost of design is the greatest threat to the continuation of the semiconductor roadmap." For years, the industry followed the ITRS updates on productivity improvements provided by automating design and hardware to counteract the looming design cost. The discussion on decarbonization has some simil... » read more

Blog Review: Nov. 17


In a podcast, Arm's Geof Wheelwright and Hilary Tam chat about the importance of efforts to decarbonize compute and how low-power compute can help ensure that the benefits of technology outweigh the environmental cost. Synopsys' Graham Allan and Vikas Gautam consider what's driving demand for HBM3, what's different from the previous HBM2E specification, unique design considerations, and how ... » read more

Two Methods For Debugging SW Workloads On Arm-Based SoCs


By Andy Meier and Tomasz Piekarz In a typical system-on-a-chip (SoC) development project, chip architects will make a given SoC's initial specification available to design teams years in advance of the silicon. As requirements change, they will modify both the hardware and software specifications. Typically, a large portion of the software development occurs much later in the development pro... » read more

Improving Power Efficiency In Ultra-Low Power Designs


Faster data communications in phones and data centers grabs headlines, but many applications don't require the continuous, high-data-rate communications needed for video streaming or image processing. In fact, for many devices, designing for better performance results in wasted energy and sharply curtails the time between battery charges. That is especially true for machine-to-machine (M2M) ... » read more

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