China Factors Heavily In Policy And Business Considerations


The year begins with intensified attention to China’s rapid semiconductor industry growth, which was a central theme of the recent SEMI Industry Strategy Symposium (ISS) and also weighed heavily in a new report from a Presidential advisory council. Speaking at the SEMI Industry Strategy Symposium (ISS), Handel Jones, CEO of International Business Strategies (IBS), forecast the global sem... » read more

Blog Review: Jan. 18


Mentor's Michael White warns that while skipping a node can be appealing, be prepared for the increase in computation requirements. Synopsys' Hezi Saar checks out the benefits of moving to the MIPI I3C standardized sensor interface. Cadence's Paul McLellan highlights a talk by Eric Grosse on approaches to security and the RISC-V architecture. Applied's Mike Chudzik explains the problem... » read more

Performance Increasingly Tied To I/O


Speeding up input and output is becoming a cornerstone for improving performance and lowering power in SoCs and ASICs, particularly as scaling processors and adding more cores produce diminishing returns. While processors of all types continue to improve, the rate of improvement is slowing at each new node. Obtaining the expected 30% to 50% boost in performance and lower power no longer can ... » read more

Choosing Power-Saving Techniques


Engineers have come up with a long list of ways to save power in chip and system designs, but there are few rules to determine which approaches work best for any given design. There is widespread confusion about what techniques should be used where, which IP or subsystem is best, and how everything should be packaged together. The choices include everything from the proper level of clock and... » read more

The Week In Review: Design


M&A Synopsys acquired another code analysis company, Forcheck. A privately held software company based in the Netherlands, it provided a static analysis tool for detecting coding defects and anomalies in Fortran applications. Forcheck technology will be integrated into the Coverity tool. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. IP & Specifications Cadence launched verification IP ... » read more

The Multiplier And The Singularity


In 1993, Vernor Vinge, a computer scientist and science fiction writer, first described an event called the Singularity—the point when machine intelligence matches and then surpasses human intelligence. And since then, top scientists, engineers and futurists have been asking just how far away we are from that event. In 2006, Ray Kurzweil published a book, "The Singularity is Near," in whic... » read more

Power State Switching Gets Tougher


Power state switching delay is a key factor in minimizing power, and getting it right frequently means the difference between a successful design and a dead chip. But tradeoffs are intricate, complex and often involve judgment calls, making this a place where designs can go completely awry. For years, traditional, full-swing [gettech id="31093" comment="CMOS"] process technologies were used ... » read more

Mobile Processors Move Beyond Phones


Mobile processors, also known as application processors, are well-known as the engines that run smartphones, tablet computers, and other wireless devices. But these chips increasingly are finding their way into autonomous vehicles, the Internet of Things, unmanned aerial vehicles, virtual reality, and other applications far beyond phone calls and text messages. Moreover, they are gaining in com... » read more

Multiple Dimensions Of Low-Power Verification With Portable Stimulus


There is little doubt that designing for low power is one of the biggest challenges for today’s system-on-chip (SoC) devices. The need to minimize power consumption is clear for the vast array of portable electronic devices that we use every day. Consumers expect most of their gadgets to last multiple days before they require recharging, and low-power design is the key to extending battery li... » read more

2017: Manufacturing And Markets


While the industry is busy chatting about the end of Moore's Law and a maturing of the semiconductor industry, the top minds of many companies are having none of it. A slowdown in one area is just an opportunity, in another and that is reflected in the predictions for this year. As in previous years, Semiconductor Engineering will look back on these predictions at the end of the year to see ... » read more

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