Are Chips Getting More Reliable?


Reliability is emerging as a key metric in the semiconductor industry, alongside of power, performance and cost, but it also is becoming harder to measure and increasingly difficult to achieve. Most large semiconductor companies look at reliability in connection with consumer devices that last several years before they are replaced, but a big push into automotive, medical and industrial elec... » read more

The Week In Review: Design/IoT


Tools Synopsys unveiled its comprehensive standard cell library characterization and QA solution, SiliconSmart ADV, highlighting a simple multi-core licensing scheme for easy adaptation to constantly changing characterization workload requirements. Cadence updated its Sigrity portfolio focusing on multi-gigabit interfaces, including automated support for IBIS-AMI model creation, channel m... » read more

The Week In Review: Design/IoT


Tools Rambus' Cryptography Research Division uncorked a new security platform for protecting and sharing 4K UHD and high dynamic range programming. It allows consumers to store, copy and share digital content across multiple devices, while also protecting the content from theft. Included are a secure core, a software player, and trusted key provisioning. Deals Arrow and Cadence announc... » read more

The Week In Review: Design/IoT


EDA & IP EDA revenues increased 7.1% for Q3 2015, according to the EDA Consortium, upping the number to $1957.5 million, compared to $1828.1 million in Q3 2014. The four-quarters moving average also jumped by 8.8%. IC Physical Design & Verification saw the biggest gains, with a 14% increase compared to Q3 2014 and $407.9 million in revenue for the quarter. IP was runner up, with $652... » read more

CEO Outlook: 2016


Semiconductor Engineering talked with 10 CEOs from all sides of the Semiconductor Industry for a high-level view of what to expect this year—good and bad. What follows are excerpts of those conversations, which were compiled over the past month. Scott McGregor, president and CEO of Broadcom "We're going to see more M&A. In the past, you only did deals that made sense strategically or ... » read more

Blog Review: Dec. 30


It's been a quiet week on the blog front. If you're looking for a bit of downtime while you enjoy the New Year, we present thoughts on what's happened this year and what may be to come from last week's System-Level Design newsletter: Editor in Chief Ed Sperling finds acquisitions and the leading edge of design defined 2015, but other changes are ahead. Technology Editor Brian Bailey obser... » read more

How To Reduce Timing Closure Headaches


As chips have become more complex, timing closure has provided some of the most vexing challenges facing design engineers today. This step requires an increasing amount of time to complete and adds significantly to design costs and back-end schedule risks. Wire delay dominates transistor switching delay Building high-performance modern CPUs involves pipelining to achieve high frequencies. I... » read more

Consolidation’s Aftermath


The recent spate of industry consolidation continues to have repercussions across the semiconductor industry. Some of those effects will subside once the deals are either approved or nixed by regulatory agencies. Others will raise questions for months or years to come. Consolidation is not a new trend in the semiconductor industry, but the pace and size of the acquisitions in the past year a... » read more

Memory Choices Grow


Memory is becoming one of the starting points for SoC architectures, evolving from a basic checklist item that was almost always in the shadow of improving processor performance or lowering the overall power budget. In conjunction with that shift, chipmakers must now grapple with many more front-end decisions about placement, memory type and access prioritization. There are plenty of rules ... » read more

The Week In Review: Design/IoT


Predictions Wally Rhines, Mentor Graphics' chairman and CEO, was presented with the Kaufman Award last night for outstanding achievement in electronic design. In his acceptance speech, he plotted the growth of the EDA industry at a consistent 2% of the semiconductor industry for the past couple decades. But he noted that with a shift to system design automation, that number would rise from t... » read more

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