Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing


Pervasive computing, IoT, 5G and beyond Keysight Technologies received a U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Spectrum Horizons Experimental License to develop 6G technology in sub-terahertz, between 95 gigahertz (GHz) and 3 THz. "Innovations in sub-THz spectrum will support use-cases such as immersive telepresence, digital twins and extended reality, which is all real-and-virtual comb... » read more

Power Now First-Order Concern In More Markets


Concerns about energy and power efficiency are becoming as important as performance in markets where traditionally there has been a significant gap, setting the stage for significant shifts in both chip architectures and in how those ICs are designed in the first place. This shift can be seen in a growing number of applications and vertical segments. It includes mobile devices, where batteri... » read more

Constraints On The Electricity Grid


I recently wrote about Moss Landing, the biggest grid battery storage operation in the world. I discovered from talking to a friend recently that most people have no idea what constraints the electricity grid operates under. I think most politicians are the same, and they assume that if we build enough windmills and solar panels then we can live in some sort of eco-nirvana. But that's not goin... » read more

Blog Review: March 9


Arm's Ajay Joshi investigates how to select the right benchmark for CPUs used in the Home device market, such as digital television and set-top box/over-the-top devices. Ansys' Jon Kordell checks out how reliability physics simulations and physical component characterization can support component swapping in high-reliability applications when the original part is unavailable due to supply ch... » read more

Software-Driven and System-Level Tests Drive Chip Quality


Traditional semiconductor testing typically involves tests executed by automatic test equipment (ATE). But engineers are beginning to favor an additional late-test pass that tests systems-on-chip (SoCs) in a system context in order to catch design issues prior to end-product assembly. “System-level test (SLT) gives a high-volume environment where you can test the hardware and software toge... » read more

Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing


From pandemic to war — some of the news this week highlights reactions to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Pervasive computing, IoT, 5G and beyond SpaceX sent Starlink satellite dishes to Ukraine to enable Ukrainian access to the Internet. The caveat is the uplink signals from satellite equipment can be used to triangulate the position of the dish, which can then be hit by missile. The dis... » read more

Verifying Side-Channel Security Pre-Silicon


As security grows in importance, side-channel attacks pose a unique challenge because they rely on physical phenomena that aren’t always modeled for the design verification process. While everything can be hacked, the goal is to make it so difficult that an attacker concludes it isn't worth the effort. For side-channel attacks, the pre-silicon design is the best place to address any known ... » read more

Internet Tech Trends For 2022


Every year at the start of the year, Benedict Evans produces a big presentation on trends in technology, internet, mobile, and so on. He used to live in the US and did this for Andreesen-Horowitz (a16z), but he has since returned to Britain (he's English) and I think has his own consulting company. This year's presentation is titled "Three Steps to the Future." The most exciting themes in t... » read more

Preparing For Test Early In The Design Flow


Until very recently, semiconductor design, verification, and test were separate domains. Those domains have since begun to merge, driven by rising demand for reliability, shorter market windows, and increasingly complex chip architectures. In the past, products were designed from a functional perspective, and designers were not concerned about what the physical implementation of the product ... » read more

Blog Review: March 2


Arm's Charlotte Christopherson checks out SpiNNaker1, a project to develop a massively parallel, manycore supercomputer architecture that mimicked the interactions of biological neurons, and its follow up, SpiNNaker2, a hybrid system that combines statistical AI and neuromorphic computing. Cadence's Paul McLellan looks at open and generic PDKs that can be used by researchers and in education... » read more

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