EDA Looks Beyond Chips


Large EDA companies are looking at huge new opportunities that reach well beyond semiconductors, combining large-scale multi-physics simulations with methodologies and tools that were developed for chips. Top EDA executives have been talking about expanding into adjacent markets for more than a decade, but the broader markets were largely closed to them. In fact, the only significant step in... » read more

Dealing With AI/ML Uncertainty


Despite their widespread popularity, large language models (LLMs) have several well-known design issues, the most notorious being hallucinations, in which an LLM tries to pass off its statistics-based concoctions as real-world facts. Hallucinations are examples of a fundamental, underlying issue with LLMs. The inner workings of LLMs, as well as other deep neural nets (DNNs), are only partly kno... » read more

Is There Any Hope For Asynchronous Design?


In an era when power has become a fundamental design constraint, questions persist about whether asynchronous logic has a role to play. It is a design style said to have significant benefits and yet has never resulted in more than a few experiments. Synchronous design utilizes a clock, where the clock frequency is set by the longest and slowest path in the design. That includes potential var... » read more

Revitalizing DAC


The 61st Design Automation Conference is just two months away and as I get closer to retirement, I know there will only be a few remaining for me. I entered the EDA industry in 1980, so have been involved with it for almost 45 years. Over that period, I have only missed a few. It is interesting how the conference has changed over the years. In the early days, DAC was only a conference, where... » read more

What Works Best For Chiplets


The semiconductor industry is preparing for the migration from proprietary chiplet-based systems to a more open chiplet ecosystem, in which chiplets fabricated by different companies of various technologies and device nodes can be integrated in a single package with acceptable yield. To make this work as expected, the chip industry will have to solve a variety of well-documented technical an... » read more

Feasibility and Potential of Quantum Computing For a Typical EDA Optimization Problem


A new technical paper titled "QCEDA: Using Quantum Computers for EDA" was published by researchers at Fraunhofer IESE, RPTU Kaiserslautern, DLR (Germany), and OTH Regensburg. Abstract "The field of Electronic Design Automation (EDA) is crucial for microelectronics, but the increasing complexity of Integrated Circuits (ICs) poses challenges for conventional EDA: Corresponding problems are of... » read more

Hybrid Methodology To Extract Kinetic And Magnetic Inductances For Superconductor Technologies


Integrated circuits (ICs) using superconductors have emerged as the technology of choice for artificial intelligence (AI), data centers, and cloud computing. However, innovative technology requires equally innovative physical verification solutions to ensure that these superconductor ICs deliver the performance and reliability they promise. We introduce an innovative hybrid methodology to extra... » read more

Career Transitions


Many people change their career path, sometimes to take on new challenges, sometimes following opportunity or money. As we learn, we develop both expertise and skill sets and in many cases expertise in one area has diminished value in another, meaning that it becomes more difficult to switch as we get older. But there are times when both knowledge and skills can be fully transferred, making the... » read more

What’s Missing In 2.5D EDA Tools


Gaps in EDA tool chains for 2.5D designs are limiting the adoption of this advanced packaging approach, which so far has been largely confined to high-performance computing. But as the rest of the chip industry begins migrating toward advanced packaging and chiplets, the EDA industry is starting to change direction. There are learning periods with all new technologies, and 2.5D advanced pack... » read more

Cadence Cerebrus In SaaS And Imagination Technologies Case Study


Artificial Intelligence (AI) has made noteworthy progress and is now ready and available for electronic design automation. The Cadence Cerebrus Intelligent Chip Explorer utilizes AI—specifically, reinforcement machine learning (ML) technology—combined with the industry-leading Cadence digital full flow to deliver better power, performance, and area (PPA) more quickly. However, this highl... » read more

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