The Path Toward Future Automotive EE Architectures

By Frank Schirrmeister - 25 Apr, 2024 - Comments: 0

From a semiconductor market perspective, all eyes are on the automotive domain. According to Gartner, as of 2023, the automotive market is now its second-largest segment, with about 14% of the demand. Only smartphones consume more. As I mused last month in "Automotive Semiconductor March Madness 2024," those who made a bet on automotive a decade or longer ago are pretty happy these days. Still,... » read more

Virtualization In The Car

By Ann Mutschler - 06 Aug, 2020 - Comments: 1

As the automotive industry grapples with complexity due to electrification and increasing autonomy of vehicles, consolidation of ECUs within vehicles, more stringent safety and security requirements, automotive ecosystem players are looking to virtualization concepts in a number of ways to realize the vehicles of tomorrow. One way is with hardware virtualization; the ability of a device such... » read more

Pivoting Toward Safety-Critical Verification In Cars

By Ann Mutschler - 31 Jul, 2020 - Comments: 1

The inclusion of AI chips in automotive and increasingly in avionics has put a spotlight on advanced-node designs that can meet all of the ASIL-D requirements for temperature and stress. How should designers approach this task, particularly when these devices need to last longer than the applications? Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss these issues with Kurt Shuler, vice president of... » read more

Why Safety-Critical Verification Is So Difficult

By Ann Mutschler - 15 Jul, 2020 - Comments: 0

Variables Complicate Safety-Critical Device Verification

By Ann Mutschler - 01 Jul, 2020 - Comments: 0

Planning For Failures In Automotive

By Ann Mutschler - 07 Nov, 2019 - Comments: 0

The automotive industry is undergoing some fundamental shifts as it backs away from the traditional siloed approach to one of graceful failure, slowing the evolution to fully autonomy and rethinking how to achieve its goals for a reasonable cost. For traditional automakers, this means borrowing some proven strategies from the electronics world rather than trying to evolve traditional automot... » read more

Why EV Battery Design Is So Difficult

By Ann Mutschler - 03 Oct, 2019 - Comments: 4

Automotive batteries always have been treated as plug-and-play parts of a vehicle, but that approach no longer works in electric vehicles. In fact, the battery is now a differentiating factor, and it is the heaviest and most expensive component. What used to be a relatively simple component has been replaced by a variety of sensors to measure complex static thermal and aging effects, as well... » read more

Challenges To Building Level 5 Automotive Chips

By Ann Mutschler - 05 Sep, 2019 - Comments: 0

It’s an exciting time in the automotive space, and this is especially true when it comes to all of the activity around autonomous driving and the path to achieving full Level 5 autonomy. The technology is complex, the ecosystem seems to get more complex by the day, and simulating autonomous systems safely makes this an extremely fascinating area from an engineering perspective. At the heart o... » read more

Flexibility A Key For Future Cars

By Ann Mutschler - 09 Jul, 2018 - Comments: 0

First, a bit of eye candy seen in IC Manage’s booth at the recent Design Automation Conference in San Francisco. The McLaren P1 GTR. It was impossible not to stop and drool over this gorgeous, non-street-legal racecar, where all bets are off when it comes to following safety and reliability specifications. [caption id="attachment_24135661" align="alignleft" width="300"] Source: Dean Dra... » read more

Knowledge Centers
Entities, people and technologies explored

Shift Left Is The Tip Of The Iceberg

A transformative change is underway for semiconductor design and EDA. New languages, models, and abstractions will need to be created.

by Brian Bailey

Partitioning In The Chiplet Era

Understanding how chiplets interact under different workloads is critical to ensuring signal integrity and optimal performance in heterogeneous designs.

by Ann Mutschler

3.5D: The Great Compromise

Pros and cons of a middle-ground chiplet assembly that combines 2.5D and 3D-IC.

by Ed Sperling

NAND Flash Targets 1,000 Layers

New techniques go beyond improved deposition and etching, but challenges stack up, too.

by Bryon Moyer

AI’s Role In Chip Design Widens, Drawing In New Startups

Focus is on letting engineers do much more with the same or fewer resources — and less drudgery.

by Karen Heyman

What Comes After HBM For Chiplets

The standard for high-bandwidth memory limits design freedom at many levels, but that is required for interoperability. What freedoms can be taken from other functions to make chiplets possible?

by Brian Bailey

Memory Fundamentals For Engineers

eBook: Nearly everything you need to know about memory, including detailed explanations of the different types of memory; how and where these are used today; what's changing, which memories are successful and which ones might be in the future; and the limitations of each memory type.

by The SE Staff

Why Small Fab And Assembly Houses Are Thriving

Megafabs churning out the most advanced processors are not the only game in town.