Carving Up Verification


Anirudh Devgan, executive vice president and general manager of [getentity id="22032" e_name="Cadence's"] System & Verification Group, sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to discuss the evolution of verification. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: What’s changing in [getkc id="10" kc_name="verification"]? Devgan: Parallelism, greater capacity and multiple engine... » read more

Blog Review: March 22


Cadence's Paul McLellan shares TSMC's plans for 5nm and gate-all-around FET, plus other highlights from last week's Technology Symposium. Mentor's Craig Armenti examines how product development teams can increase efficiency through concurrent schematic design. Synopsys' Jim Ivers warns of the data security and privacy issues posed by a wave of popular connected toys. At Embedded World,... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Chipmakers At this week’s TSMC Technology Symposium in San Jose, Calif., TSMC rolled out a dizzying array of new processes and technologies. Perhaps the most surprising announcement was a 22nm bulk CMOS process, which is geared for ultra low-power planar chips. The technology will compete against a 22nm FD-SOI technology from GlobalFoundries. Stay tuned. The battle has just begun. As e... » read more

The Week In Review: Design


Business Andes Technology went public this week on the Taiwan Stock Exchange with an initial stock listing of 40,611,915 shares at a price of NT$65.10 (USD $2.12) per share. The shares began trading March 14, 2017, under the TWSE ticker symbol “6533.TWO.” Andes plans to use the proceeds to expand the company's R&D effort, to fuel international expansion into the U.S. and Europe and t... » read more

MEMS Microphones: A Bright Spot Among Commoditized Consumer Sensors


MEMS microphones have emerged as a bright spot among consumer sensors, which in general are going through a rapid commoditization and profit-squeezing trend. To understand what’s driving the MEMS microphone market, consider that the Apple iPhone 7 and 7S each have 4 MEMS microphones. As reported by System Plus Consulting, the latest iPhones have “a front-facing top microphone, presumably f... » read more

Power Impacting Cost Of Chips


The increase in complexity of the power delivery network (PDN) is starting to outpace increases in functional complexity, adding to the already escalating costs of modern chips. With no signs of slowdown, designers have to ensure that overdesign and margining do not eat up all of the profit margin. The semiconductor industry is used to problems becoming harder at smaller geometries, but unti... » read more

Blog Review: March 15


Cadence's Christen Decoin looks back at the changes in design rule checking and asks, with growing design sizes and rule complexity, has DRC run out of steam? Synopsys' Eric Huang provides some background on DisplayPort and its integration with the USB Type-C connector. In his latest video, Mentor's Colin Walls investigates the relationship between the choice of operating system and the p... » read more

Antenna Design Grows Up


Apple’s iPhone 4 antenna issue represents a classic example of what can go wrong in modern antenna design. Put one in the wrong place, and a seemingly insignificant part can turn a cool new product into a public relations nightmare. Ever since antennas dropped out of sight, most consumers don't give them a second thought. In the 1960s, almost every home had a rooftop antenna. Fast forward ... » read more

The Ultimate Shift Left


Floorplanning is becoming much more difficult due to a combination of factors—increased complexity of the power delivery network, lengthening of clock trees, rising levels of communication, and greater connectedness of [getkc id="81" kc_name="SoC"]s coupled with highly constrained routing resources. The goal of floorplanning is to determine optimal placement of blocks on a die. But connect... » read more

The Case For Narrowband-IoT


Cellular network-based Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) is marching closer to reality as players across the ecosystem put forth silicon IP, software protocol stacks, carrier network software upgrades and more. The kicker came last year when the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), the global cellular industry standards body, finalized a NB-IoT standard in its 'release 13.' With that, device mak... » read more

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