Chip Industry Week in Review

By The SE Staff - 13 Jun, 2025 - Comments: 0

The Chinese Academy of Sciences unveiled a fully automated processor chip design system, claiming the potential to accelerate semiconductor development and replace human programmers. Micron Technology plans to expand its U.S. investments to approximately $150 billion in domestic memory manufacturing and $50 billion in R&D, which is $30 billion higher than previously reported. AMD laun... » read more

Multi-Die Assemblies Complicate Parasitic Extraction

By Ann Mutschler - 12 Jun, 2025 - Comments: 0

The shift from planar designs to multi-die assemblies with complex interconnects is transforming what had become almost an afterthought in the design process into a first-order challenge. Parasitics include things like inductance, capacitance, and resistance, which have become more problematic at advanced nodes due to increasing logic density, thinner interconnects and insulators, and a spik... » read more

The Best DRAMs For Artificial Intelligence

By Bryon Moyer - 12 Jun, 2025 - Comments: 0

Artificial intelligence (AI) involves intense computing and tons of data. The computing may be performed by CPUs, GPUs, or dedicated accelerators, and while the data travels through DRAM on its way to the processor, the best DRAM type for this purpose depends on the type of system that is performing the training or inference. The memory challenge facing engineering teams today is how to keep... » read more

Verification Software And Methodology Insights

By Robbie O'Sullivan - 12 Jun, 2025 - Comments: 0

Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to attend CadenceLIVE Silicon Valley 2025. Among the many engaging sessions, the Verification Software track highlighted how leading companies are advancing verification methodologies to meet the demands of increasingly complex designs. The track featured seven presentations from industry leaders, each offering a unique perspective on how SVG’s verif... » read more

Designing For Reliability With A System Life Estimator

By Cadence - 11 Jun, 2025 - Comments: 0

From big machines to small handheld equipment, all typically come with varying warranty timelines based on estimations. If this number is overestimated or underestimated, it can incur millions of dollars in losses to manufacturers. That’s why it’s important to look at the lifetime system estimation as a bottom-up process. The efficiency in this approach results in a robust method to formula... » read more

Chip Industry Week in Review

By The SE Staff - 06 Jun, 2025 - Comments: 0

Qualcomm announced plans to buy Alphawave Semi for ~$2.4 billion in a deal expected to close in Q1 2026. Qualcomm plans to leverage Alphawave Semi's connectivity products, including chiplets, to develop high-performance, low-power solutions for AI inferencing and customized CPUs in data centers. Qualcomm's traditional targets were mobile phones and edge computing. [Updated 6/9.] Global semic... » read more

How Secure Are Analog Circuits?

By Ed Sperling - 05 Jun, 2025 - Comments: 0

The move toward multi-die assemblies and the increasing value of sensor data at the edge are beginning to focus attention and raise questions about security in analog circuits. In most SoC designs today, security is almost entirely a digital concern. Security requirements in digital circuits are well understood, particularly in large data centers and at the upper end of edge computing, which... » read more

Accelerating Chiplet-Based SoC Design For AI-Defined Vehicles

By Robert Schweiger - 05 Jun, 2025 - Comments: 0

Today, we are witnessing a paradigm shift towards a more modular design approach that disaggregates SoC functions into various chiplets, each optimized for specific functionalities. Chiplets offer more modularity, which enables product scalability and customization, which is key for AI-defined vehicles, the next generation of software-defined vehicles (SDVs). Cadence’s Helium Virtual and H... » read more

Mobile Chip Challenges In The AI Era

By Liz Allan - 05 Jun, 2025 - Comments: 0

Leading smart phone vendors are struggling to keep pace with the rising compute and power demands of localized generative AI, standard phone functions, and the need to move more data back and forth between handsets and the cloud. In addition to edge functions, such as facial recognition and other on-device apps, phones must accommodate a continuous stream of new communications protocols, and... » read more

AR/VR Glasses Taking Shape With New Chips

By Liz Allan - 05 Jun, 2025 - Comments: 0

More augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and mixed reality (MR) wearables are coming, but how they are connected, and where image and other data is processed, are still in flux. Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses, for example, look like classic eyeglasses, but they rely on a tethered smart phone for such functions as taking pictures, AI voice assistance, and object identification. In contrast... » read more

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