Blog Review: Nov. 27


Arm's Ben Fletcher digs into what's needed to make wireless 3D integration a reality from a tool to automate the design and optimization process for inductors used in wireless 3D-ICs to exploring how the data can be encoded in the transceiver to reduce power consumption. Cadence's Paul McLellan listens in as Eli Singerman of Intel explains the importance of platform security and why firmware... » read more

Transforming Silicon Bring-Up


Not too long ago, the return of first silicon from the foundry was a nail-biting moment as power was applied to the chip. Today, better verification methodologies, increased use of emulation, and more mature fabrication practices have transformed how teams utilize first silicon. It is about to be transformed again, and there are some interesting possibilities on the horizon. Much of what use... » read more

Verification In The Era Of Autonomous Driving, Artificial Intelligence And Machine Learning


The last couple of weeks have been busy with me participating on three panels that dealt with AI and machine learning in the contexts of automotive and aero/defense, in San Jose, Berlin and Detroit. The common theme? Data is indeed the new oil, and it messes with traditional value creation in electronics. Also, requirements for system design and verification are changing and there are completel... » read more

Thoroughly Verifying Complex SoCs


The number of things that can go wrong in complex SoCs targeted at leading-edge applications is staggering, and there is no indication that verifying these chips will function as expected is going to get any easier. Heterogeneous designs developed for leading-edge applications, such as 5G, IoT, automotive and AI, are now complex systems in their own right. But they also need to work in conju... » read more

Portable Stimulus And Digital Twins


It has been a year since Accellera's Portable Test and Stimulus Specification became a standard. Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss the impact it has had, and the future direction of it, with  Larry Melling, product management director for Cadence; Tom Fitzpatrick, strategic verification architect for Mentor, a Siemens Business; Tom Anderson, technical marketing consultant for OneSp... » read more

Week In Review: IoT, Security, Automotive


Automotive Porsche’s electric race car, the 99X Electric, used ANSYS Technology’s system-level simulation solutions to create an advanced electric powertrain. The powertrain is also being adapted for use in Porsche’s consumer electric cars. "ANSYS system-level simulations are instrumental for optimizing the Porsche E-Performance Powertrain's motor, gearbox, power electronics and control ... » read more

Blog Review: Nov. 20


Arm's Ben Fletcher points to research into a new low-cost alternative to through-silicon vias in 3D stacked ICs, particularly cost-sensitive IoT designs, where communication between silicon layers is completely wireless. Cadence's Paul McLellan checks in on the progress of DARPA's OpenROAD project to build a no-human-in-the-loop open source EDA flow for leading-edge nodes. Mentor's Colin ... » read more

Why Standard Memory Choices Are So Confusing


System architects increasingly are developing custom memory architectures based upon specific use cases, adding to the complexity of the design process even though the basic memory building blocks have been around for more than half a century. The number of tradeoffs has skyrocketed along with the volume of data. Memory bandwidth is now a gating factor for applications, and traditional memor... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


M&A eSilicon will be acquired by Inphi Corporation and Synopsys. Inphi is acquiring the majority of the company, including the ASIC business and 56/112G SerDes design and related IP, for $216 million in both cash and the assumption of debt. Inphi expects to combine its DSP, TiA, Driver and SiPho products with eSilicon’s 2.5D packaging and custom silicon design capabilities for electro-optics... » read more

Week in Review: IoT, Security, Automotive


Connectivity, 5G Rambus has revealed a PCI Express 5.0 interface on advanced 7nm finFET process node for heterogenous computing aimed at performance-intensive uses, such as AI, data center, HPC, storage and 400GbE networking. With a PHY and a digital controller core recently acquired Northwest Logic, the interface has 32 GT/s (gigatransfers per second) bandwidth per lane with 128 GB/s bandwidt... » read more

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