Utilizing More Data To Improve Chip Design

By Ann Mutschler - 28 Mar, 2019 - Comments: 0

Just about every step of the IC tool flow generates some amount of data. But certain steps generate a mind-boggling amount of data, not all of which is of equal value. The challenge is figuring out what's important for which parts of the design flow. That determines what to extract and loop back to engineers, and when that needs to be done in order to improve the reliability of increasingly com... » read more

The Automation Of AI

By Brian Bailey - 28 Mar, 2019 - Comments: 0

Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss the role that EDA has in automating artificial intelligence and machine learning with Doug Letcher, president and CEO of Metrics; Daniel Hansson, CEO of Verifyter; Harry Foster, chief scientist verification for Mentor, a Siemens Business; Larry Melling, product management director for Cadence; Manish Pandey, Synopsys fellow; and Raik Brinkmann, CEO ... » read more

The Problem With Post-Silicon Debug

By Ann Mutschler - 28 Feb, 2019 - Comments: 0

Semiconductor engineers traditionally have focused on trying to create 'perfect' GDSII at tape-out, but factors such as hardware-software interactions, increasingly heterogeneous designs, and the introduction of AI are forcing companies to rethink that approach. In the past, chipmakers typically banked on longer product cycles and multiple iterations of silicon to identify problems. This no ... » read more

Using Sensor Data To Improve Yield And Uptime

By Ed Sperling - 21 Feb, 2019 - Comments: 2

Semiconductor equipment vendors are starting to add more sensors into their tools in an effort to improve fab uptime and wafer yield, and to reduce cost of ownership and chip failures. Massive amounts of data gleaned from those tools is expected to provide far more detail than in the past about multiple types and sources of variation, including when and where that variation occurred and how,... » read more

Why Analog Designs Fail

By Brian Bailey - 14 Feb, 2019 - Comments: 2

The gap between analog and digital reliability is growing, and digital designs appear to be winning. Reports show that analog content causes the most test failures and contributes significantly more than digital to field returns. The causes aren't always obvious, though. Some of it is due to the maturity of analog design and verification. While great strides have been made in digital circuit... » read more

Where Electronics Begins, And So Much More

By Bob Smith - 13 Feb, 2019 - Comments: 0

When the Electronic Design Automation Consortium (EDAC) first coined the phrase “Where Electronics Begins” 20 years ago, little did we know how true it is, especially today as we move further into the system-centric era. In those days, EDA tools and methodologies were must-haves for chip designers. The system was only a minor consideration for the EDA community as was the semiconductor supp... » read more

Antenna Array Design for ADAS

By David Vye - 12 Feb, 2019 - Comments: 0

By Milton Lien and David Vye By implementing radar technology over the 76 to 81 GHz spectrum, advanced driver-assist systems (ADAS) enable smart vehicles with the ability to alert and assist drivers in a variety of functions, from low tire-pressure warning to collision avoidance to self-parking. These automotive radar applications use the millimeter-wave (mmWave) spectrum to exploit more ban... » read more

Can AI, 5G Chips Be Verified?

By Ed Sperling - 31 Jan, 2019 - Comments: 0

AI and 5G bode well for the semiconductor industry. They will require many billions of new, semi-customized and highly complex chips from the edge all the way to the data center, and they will require massive amounts of engineering time and tooling. But these technologies also are raising lots of questions on the design and verification front about what else can be automated and how to do it. ... » read more

Pushing AI Into The Mainstream

By Brian Bailey - 31 Jan, 2019 - Comments: 0

Artificial intelligence is emerging as the driving force behind many advancements in technology, even though the industry has merely scratched the surface of what may be possible. But how deeply AI penetrates different market segments and technologies, and how quickly it pushes into the mainstream, depend on a variety of issues that still must be resolved. In addition to a plethora of techni... » read more

EDA Grabs Bigger Slice Of Chip Market

By Brian Bailey - 31 Jan, 2019 - Comments: 0

EDA revenues have been a fairly constant percentage of semiconductor revenues, but that may change in 2019. With new customers creating demand, and some traditional customers shifting focus from advanced nodes, the various branches of the EDA tool industry may be where sticky technical problems are solved. IC manufacturing, packaging and development tools all are finding new ways to handle t... » read more

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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.

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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.

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

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New AI Processors Architectures Balance Speed With Efficiency

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