Blog Review: April 7


Cadence's Paul McLellan checks out the US National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence report and what it recommends for funding the development of AI as well as semiconductor manufacturing and research. Siemens EDA's Ray Salemi continues exploring Python for verification and shows how to use cocotb to create a simple bus functional model and connect it to a testbench. Synopsys... » read more

New Uses For AI


AI is being embedded into an increasing number of technologies that are commonly found inside most chips, and initial results show dramatic improvements in both power and performance. Unlike high-profile AI implementations, such as self-driving cars or natural language processing, much of this work flies well under the radar for most people. It generally takes the path of least disruption, b... » 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

Preventing Online Fraud


I attended a webcast on Anti-Fraud organized by the RSA Conference in the leadup to the conference itself. The anti-fraud webcast was split into two sections. First was Steve Winderfield, who is advisory CISO at Akamai, titled "How We Can Keep up with Cyber-Criminals' Evolving Business Models?" The second part was by Michael Tiffany of White Ops and Chris Ott of Rothwell Figg, titled "Dete... » read more

mmWave Chip, Package, And Board Beamforming Solutions


RF front-end architectures grow more complex with each generation of communication systems. To accommodate these architectures, more densification and miniaturization is taking place with electronic systems implemented through innovations in system-in-package (SiP) design. 5G data rates exceeding 1GB/s will be supported by the available bandwidth in the millimeter-wave (mmWave) spectrum and ... » read more

How Heterogeneous ICs Are Reshaping Design Teams


Experts at the Table: Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss the complex interactions developing between different engineering groups as designs become more heterogeneous, with Jean-Marie Brunet, senior director for the Emulation Division at Siemens EDA; Frank Schirrmeister, senior group director for solution marketing at Cadence; Maurizio Griva, R&D Manager at Reply; and Laurent Mai... » read more

Blog Review: March 31


Arm's Pavel Rudko considers several common approaches used to get better performance for neural network inference on mobile devices, such as optimizing and pruning the model and using different processing units to execute different workloads in parallel. Siemens EDA's Ray Salemi introduces basic concepts of using Python for verification and how to get Python to talk to an RTL device-under-te... » read more

Computing Where Data Resides


Computational storage is starting to gain traction as system architects come to grips with the rising performance, energy and latency impacts of moving large amounts of data between processors and hierarchical memory and storage. According to IDC, the global datasphere will grow from 45 zettabytes in 2019 to 175 by 2025. But that data is essentially useless unless it is analyzed or some amou... » read more

Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing


Automotive A fire at a Renesas fab may put a further squeeze on the supply of automotive chips, according to an Associated Press story. The fire in Naka Factory (located in Japan in Hitachinaka, Ibaraki Prefecture) was caused by plating equipment igniting within the first floor of the N3 Building and was extinguished the same day it started on March 19th, according to a press release. “The c... » read more

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