Latest IC Forecast: Big Demand, Shortages


Over the last year, the semiconductor industry has seen its share of highs, lows and uncertainties. In early 2020, the business looked bright, but the IC market dropped amid the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak. Throughout 2020 different countries implemented a number of measures to mitigate the outbreak, such as stay-at-home orders and business closures. Economic turmoil and job losses soon follo... » read more

Making Chip Packaging More Reliable


Packaging houses are readying the next wave of IC packages, but these products must prove to be reliable before they are incorporated into systems. These packages involve several advanced technologies, such as 2.5D/3D, chiplets and fan-out, but vendors also are working on new versions of more mature package types, like wirebond and leadframe technologies. As with previous products, packaging... » read more

EDA, IP Revenues Soar


EDA and IP revenues increased 15.4% to $3.032 billion in Q4 2020, according to a just-released report, with huge increases reported in China and India, and a solid double-digit increase in the Americas. EDA/IP revenue from China increased 66.4% in Q4 EDA/IP compared with the same period in 2019, and for the 2020 calendar year it was up 52.3%. India's spending was up 32% for the quarter. And ... » read more

6 Steps To Successful Board Level Reliability Testing


For semiconductor manufacturers entering the automotive environment, the lack of universal qualifications standards often leads to inconsistent reliability expectations. The most efficient solution is to establish a robust and thorough BLR testing plan that is uniquely designed for a specific manufacturer validated by a broad range of industry experiences. 6 Steps to Successful Board Level R... » read more

Security For Cars That Are Smartphones On Wheels


Your modern car is a computer on wheels—potentially hundreds of computers on a set of wheels. Heck, even the wheels are infested with computers—what do you think prompts that little light on your dashboard to come on if your tire pressure is low? And computers don’t just run your infotainment system, backup camera, dashboard warning lights, and the voice that tells you to buckle your seat... » read more

Privacy Protection A Must For Driver Monitoring


Driver monitoring systems are so tied into a vehicle's architecture that soon the driver will not be able to opt out because the vehicle will only operate if the driver is detected and monitored. This is raising privacy concerns about whether enough security is in place for the data to remain private. At the very least, laws and regulations in every geography where the vehicle will operate a... » read more

How To Measure ML Model Accuracy


Machine learning (ML) is about making predictions about new data based on old data. The quality of any machine-learning algorithm is ultimately determined by the quality of those predictions. However, there is no one universal way to measure that quality across all ML applications, and that has broad implications for the value and usefulness of machine learning. “Every industry, every d... » read more

Protecting The Connected Automobile From Modern-Day Cyberattacks


As the industry continues to make advances in the autonomous vehicle as well as in vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communications, automotive OEMs must do everything possible to protect the connected automobile from potential cyberattacks. Unfortunately, attacks have become so prevalent, regulatory agencies are now defining cybersecurity requirements. New laws are b... » read more

Systematic Methodology To Solve Reset Challenges In Automotive SoCs


Modern automotive SoCs typically contain multiple asynchronous reset signals to ensure systematic functional recovery from unexpected situations and faults. This complex reset architecture leads to a new set of problems such as possible reset domain crossing (RDC) issues. The conventional clock domain and CDC verification methodologies cannot identify such critical bugs. In this paper, we prese... » read more

Demand for IC Resilience Drives Methodology Changes


Applications that demand safety, security, and resilience are driving new ways of thinking about design, verification, and the long-term reliability of chips on a mass scale. The need is growing for chips that can process more data faster, over longer periods of time, and often within a shrinking power budget. That, in turn, is forcing changes at multiple levels, at the architecture, design,... » read more

← Older posts Newer posts →