Reflection On 2017: Design And EDA


People love to make predictions, and most of the time they have it easy, but at Semiconductor Engineering, we ask them to look back on the predictions they make each year and to assess how close to the mark they were. We see what they missed and what surprised them. Not everyone accepts our offer to grade themselves, but most have this year. (Part one looked at the predictions associated with s... » read more

The Week In Review: Design


M&A Synopsys will acquire Black Duck Software, a provider of software for securing and managing open source software. Synopsys already has a stake in this area from its Coverity acquisition in 2014, which it has been using to analyze security practices in open source software. Founded in 2003 and headquartered in Massachusetts, Black Duck's products automate the process of identifying and ... » read more

2017: Tool And Methodology Shifts


As the markets for semiconductor products evolve, so do the tools that enable automation, optimization and verification. While tools rarely go away, they do bend like plants toward light. Today, it is no longer the mobile phone industry that is defining the direction, but automotive and the Internet of Things (IoT). Both of these markets have very different requirements and each creates their o... » read more