Voltage Drop Now Requires Dynamic Analysis


At one time a relatively infrequent occurrence, voltage drop is now a major impediment to reliability at advanced nodes. Decades ago, voltage drop was only an issue for very large and high-speed designs, where there was concern about supply lines delivering full voltage to transistors. As design margins have tightened in modern advanced designs, controlling voltage drop has become a requiremen... » read more

Blog Review: Aug. 7


Synopsys' Jyotika Athavale and Randy Fish investigate the problem of silent data corruption caused by difficult-to-detect hardware defects that cause unnoticed errors in the data being processed and is becoming an increasingly pressing problem as computing scales massively at a rapid pace with the demands of AI. Siemens' Keith Felton suggests adopting physical design reuse circuits to provid... » read more

Chip Industry Week in Review


Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology proposed a new EUV litho technology using only four reflective mirrors and a new method of illumination optics that it claims will use 1/10 the power and cost half as much as existing EUV technology from ASML. Applied Materials may not receive expected U.S. funding to build a $4 billion research facility in Sunnyvale, CA, due to internal government... » read more

Chip Security Now Depends On Widening Supply Chain


Securing chips is becoming more challenging as SoCs are disaggregated into chiplets, creating new vulnerabilities that involve hardware and software, as well as multiple entities, and extending threats across a much broader supply chain. In the past, much of the cyber threat model was confined to either hardware or software, and where multiple vendors were involved, various chips were separa... » read more

The Journey Of The Olympic Torch: History, Design, And Technology


The Olympic Torch represents a rich, blended history of ancient traditions and modern values. Bearing the iconic flame, the Olympic torch relay honors the symbolic power of fire, embodying purity, passion, and perseverance. The flame ignites in Olympia, Greece, through the sun's rays—linking the ancient and modern Games—and journeys to the host city, where it illuminates the "Celebration Ca... » read more

Blog Review: July 31


Cadence's Jasmine Makhija explains how to boost the performance of CXL 3.0 by using NOP (No Operation) Insertion Hints in latency-optimized 256B Flit Mode, which enables the system to quickly revert to the low-latency path after temporarily switching to a higher-latency path due to error correction needs. Synopsys' Robert Fey finds that by automatically and dynamically linking requirements a... » read more

Aeroacoustics Large-Eddy Simulation of VTOL Aircraft Design


This conference paper, co-authored by Honda Motor Co. and Cadence, reveals  findings on the aeroacoustics predictions of multibladed vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) rotors using large-eddy simulations (LES). Why should you read this white paper? Advanced Simulations: We conducted simulations on VTOL rotors with two to five blades, assessing high-frequency noise predictions. Exp... » read more

Will AI Disrupt EDA?


Generative AI has disrupted search, it is transforming the computing landscape, and now it's threatening to disrupt EDA. But despite the buzz and the broad pronouncements of radical changes ahead, it remains unclear where it will have impact and how deep any changes will be. EDA has two primary roles — automation and optimization. Many of the optimization problems are NP hard, which means ... » read more

Floor-Planning Evolves Into The Chiplet Era


3D-ICs and heterogeneous chiplets will require significant changes in physical layout tools, where the placement of chiplets and routing of signals can have a big impact on overall system performance and reliability. EDA vendors are well aware of the issues and working on solutions. Top on the list of challenges for 3D-ICs is thermal dissipation. Logic typically generates the most heat, and ... » read more

Debugging SystemVerilog Constraint Randomization: A Comprehensive Guide


SystemVerilog constraint randomization is a powerful methodology for generating realistic and diverse test scenarios in the realm of hardware design verification. However, like any complex methodology, it can sometimes be challenging to debug when an unexpected issue arises. In this article, we will explore common debug techniques and strategies to help you effectively troubleshoot your SystemV... » read more

← Older posts Newer posts →