Chip Industry Week In Review


Breaking news: Nvidia and Synopsys announced a multi-faceted, multi-year deal that includes everything from digital twins to CUDA programming, engineering, and marketing collaboration, and Nvidia's $2B purchase of Synopsys stock. [Updated 12/1] Memory news: Micron is building a $9.6B HBM facility in the city of Higashi-Hiroshima Japan, reports Nikkei. China's ChangXin Memory Technol... » read more

Blog Review: Nov. 26


Cadence's Rajneesh Chauhan explains CXL's low power state, L0p, which maintains partial lane activity for efficient power management without compromising performance, and how comprehensive verification can help ensure reliable implementation. Siemens' John Ferguson provides a brief history of design rule checking, major advancements over the years, and why introducing it in earlier design st... » read more

AI Plays Multiple Roles Within EDA


AI's infusion into our world may seem sudden and unexpected, but EDA has been quietly adopting it for more than a decade. What's changed is that it's now becoming more visible, thanks to increasingly powerful large language models (LLMs) and the need to apply them to increasingly challenging multi-physics problems. Two fundamental shifts underlie AI's increasing prominence. First, heat is be... » read more

What Is 3D-IC Technology? Fundamentals, Architecture, And Design Concepts


As process nodes continue to advance into the sub-micron era, the limitations of traditional scaling are becoming increasingly evident. Larger monolithic chips are facing challenges such as higher power density, routing congestion, and reduced yield. Three-dimensional integrated circuits (3D-IC) technology represents a breakthrough approach by stacking multiple dies vertically. This design red... » read more

PCI Express Design Guide – Q&A for Gen 4, 5, 6


High-speed PCB design for PCI Express Gen4, Gen5, and Gen6 pushes every dimension of signal integrity and layout engineering. This PCIe Design Guide – Q&A (Part 1) compiles 60 of the most common real-world design questions that engineers face—and provides detailed, practical answers grounded in simulation data, field experience, and compliance testing. Whether you’re defining your... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


China's Hefei Lumiverse Technology reportedly has developed a desktop-sized High Harmonic Generation light source that generates wavelengths as small as 1nm. One customer already has used it to produce 14nm chips, which was the original target node for EUV, according to one report. As a point of comparison, TSMC and Samsung didn't start using EUV until the 7nm node, relying instead on immersion... » read more

Changes In Mixed-Signal IC Verification


Analog and digital engineers traditionally have worked in very different worlds. Many analog engineers for years have opted to verify analog designs by scrutinizing waveforms, while digital engineers have treated analog blocks like black boxes. But as these two areas converge in advanced SoCs and multi-die assemblies, the demarcation line between these engineering disciplines is being erased. S... » read more

The Future For Formal Verification


Experts at the table: Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss possible future directions for formal verification technology with Ashish Darbari, CEO for Axiomise; Jin Zhang, product management group director for the Verification Group at Cadence; Sean Safarpour, executive director for R&D at Synopsys; and Jeremy Levitt, principal engineer for Digital Verification Technology at Siemen... » read more

Blog Review: Nov. 19


Cadence's Mamta Rana explores how Forward Error Correction in PCIe 6.0 is key to its 64.0 GT/s per lane bandwidth by enabling the receiver to detect and correct errors without retransmissions or protocol-level recovery by adding redundant information to transmitted data. Siemens' Dave Rich shares a paper from DVCon 1992 that introduced a new RTL modeling construct to Verilog, eventually know... » read more

Chip Industry Week in Review


Samsung reportedly is hiking memory chip prices by 30% to 60% due to high demand from AI data centers and constrained supplies. Those shortages are causing ripples elsewhere. SMIC, China's largest foundry, said its customers are holding back orders for other types of semiconductor due to concerns about memory supplies. Meanwhile, interest in photonics and power semiconductors is picking up, ... » read more

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