Blog Review: May 25


As a prelude of drone delivery, shipping company DHL set up a carbon fiber tilt-rotor to ferry packages between two villages in the Alps, in this week's top five tech picks from Ansys' Bill Vandermark. Plus, IBM's phase-change memory, see-through wood that's stronger than glass, and perhaps a Babel fish. There have been considerable investments in new memories, but getting to them won't be a... » read more

The Week In Review: Design


Acquisitions ARM acquired embedded computer vision and imaging technology company [getentity id="22917" comment="Apical"] for $350 million in cash. According to ARM, the company's technology has been utilized in more than 1.5 billion smartphones and in about 300 million other consumer and industrial devices. Synopsys acquired [getentity id="22916" comment="Simpleware"], a provider of soft... » read more

Bridging the IP Divide


IP reuse enabled greater efficiency in the creation of large, complex SoCs, but even after 20 years there are few tools to bridge the divide between the IP provider and the IP user. The problem is that there is an implicit fuzzy contract describing how the IP should be used, what capabilities it provides, and the extent of the verification that has been performed. IP vendors have been trying to... » read more

Blog Review: May 18


Lead-absorbing bots may be the future of cleaning up polluted industrial wastewater, in this week's top five tech picks from Ansys' Justin Nescott. Plus, the Hyperloop is getting closer, and two years of Curiosity. In his latest podcast, Synopsys' Robert Vamosi chats with Chris Clark about the current automotive security landscape and what gaps exist when it comes to standards. From an ED... » read more

The Evolving Thermal Landscape


Managing heat in chips is becoming a precision balancing act at advanced nodes and with advanced packaging. While it's important to ensure that temperatures don't rise high enough to cause reliability problems, adding too much circuitry to control heat can reduce performance and lower energy efficiency. The most common approach to dealing with these issues is thermal simulation, which requir... » read more

The Week In Review: Design/IoT


Standards Si2 is launching a new project to develop a new power modeling standard, focusing on estimation of power consumption more easily and more accurately throughout the design process, especially during the earliest stages. The approved specification will be contributed to the IEEE P2416 Standards Working Group for industry-wide distribution. IP Synopsys extended automotive safety... » read more

Power-Centric Chip Architectures


As traditional scaling runs out of steam, new chip architectures are emerging with power as the starting point. While this trend has been unfolding for some time, it is getting an extra boost and sense of urgency as design teams weigh a growing number of design challenges and options across a variety of new markets. Among the options are [getkc id="196" kc_name="multi-patterning"] and [getkc... » read more

FinFET Scaling Reaches Thermal Limit


In 1974, Robert H. Dennard was working as an IBM researcher. He introduced the idea that MOSFETs would continue to work as voltage-controlled switches in conjunction with shrinking features, providing doping levels, the chip's geometry, and voltages are scaled along with those size reductions. This became known as Dennard's Law even though, just like Moore's Law, it was anything but a law. T... » read more

Addressing The Challenges Of Photonic IC Design Via An Integrated Electronic/Photonic Design Automation Environment


Photonics—the science and technology of generating, controlling, and detecting light—is transitioning quickly into mainstream electronic designs. Photonic IC (PIC) design does, however, come with some unique challenges in areas including layout, error checking, and circuit modeling. While electronic designers would have expertise in using a traditional electronic design automation (EDA) flo... » read more

2.5D Becomes A Reality


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss 2.5D and advanced packaging with Max Min, senior technical manager at [getentity id="22865" e_name="Samsung"]; Rob Aitken, an [getentity id="22186" comment="ARM"] fellow; John Shin, vice president at [getentity id="22903" e_name="Marvell"]; Bill Isaacson, director of ASIC marketing at [getentity id="22242" e_name="eSilicon"]; Frank Ferro, senior di... » read more

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