Locking When Emulating Xtensa LX Multi-Core On A Xilinx FPGA

By Nayan Gaywala - 31 Oct, 2024 - Comments: 0

Today's high-performance computing systems often require the designer to instantiate multiple CPU or DSP cores in their subsystem. However, the performance gained by using multiple CPUs comes with additional programming complexity, especially when accessing shared memory data structures and hardware peripherals. CPU cores need to access shared data in an atomic fashion in a multi-core environme... » read more

Accelerating The Pace And Precision Of AI Chip Innovation

By Stelios Diamantidis - 29 Aug, 2024 - Comments: 0

The Hot Chips 2024 conference, which took place this week in Silicon Valley, was a showcase for AI chip innovation. The three-day program illustrated the race among both established chipmakers and new entrants to explore advanced architectures and embrace novel design solutions to deliver the next breakthrough AI processor. In this article, I share a few “hot takes” from the conference that... » read more

Communication Is Key To Finding And Fixing Bugs In ICs

By Ann Mutschler and Adam Kovac - 08 May, 2024 - Comments: 0

Experts at the Table: Finding and eliminating bugs at the source can be painstaking work, but it also can prevent even greater problems from developing later on. To examine the best ways to tackle this problem, Semiconductor Engineering sat down with Ashish Darbari, CEO at Axiomise; Ziyad Hanna, corporate vice president R&D at Cadence; Jim Henson, ASIC verification software product manager ... » read more

Engineers Or Their Tools: Which Is Responsible For Finding Bugs?

By Ann Mutschler and Adam Kovac - 28 Mar, 2024 - Comments: 0

Experts at the table: Finding and eliminating bugs at the source can be painstaking work, but it can prevent bigger problems later in the design flow, when they are more difficult and expensive to fix. Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss these issues with Ashish Darbari, CEO at Axiomise; Ziyad Hanna, corporate vice president R&D at Cadence; Jim Henson, ASIC verification software... » read more

Complex Safety Mechanisms Require Interoperability And Automation For Validation And Metric Closure

By Siemens EDA - 06 Mar, 2024 - Comments: 0

The race to autonomous mobility among the automobile manufacturers is driving the evolution of the underlying semiconductors. As a result, semiconductor technologies are moving towards higher densities and lower operating voltages, and this migration is introducing increasing sensitivity to random hardware failures – the failures which occur unpredictably over a semiconductor’s lifetime. Mo... » read more

FPGA-Based HW/SW Platform For Pre-Silicon Emulation Of RISC-V Designs (Barcelona Supercomputing Center)

By Technical Paper Link - 15 Feb, 2024 - Comments: 0

A technical paper titled “Makinote: An FPGA-Based HW/SW Platform for Pre-Silicon Emulation of RISC-V Designs” was published by researchers at Barcelona Supercomputing Center and Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. Abstract: "Emulating chip functionality before silicon production is crucial, especially with the increasing prevalence of RISC-V-based designs. FPGAs are promising candidate... » read more

The Challenge And Value Proposition of eFPGA Emulation

By Cheng Wang - 05 Oct, 2023 - Comments: 0

More than 40 chips have been licensed to use EFLX eFPGA and more than 20 chips are already working in silicon. Big customers like Renesas are planning high volumes and families of chips using eFPGA. eFPGA is being used in process nodes from 180nm to 5nm, with 3nm and 18A in evaluation. Especially for the high-volume customers working in advanced finFET nodes, the strong need is for first ... » read more

Industry Pressure Grows For Simulating Systems Of Systems

By Brian Bailey - 28 Sep, 2023 - Comments: 0

Most complex systems are designed in a top-down manner, but as the amount of electronic content in those systems increases, so does the pressure on the chip industry to provide high-level models and simulation capabilities. Those models either do not exist today, or they exist in isolation. No matter how capable a model or simulator, there never will be one that can do it all. In some cases,... » read more

Designing Vehicles Virtually

By John Koon - 07 Sep, 2023 - Comments: 0

The shift toward software-defined vehicles (SDVs), electric vehicles (EVs), and ultimately autonomous vehicles (AVs) is proving the value and exposing the weaknesses in simulating individual components and complete vehicles. The ability to model this intensely complex maze of real-world interactions and possible scenarios is improving, and it's happening faster than comparable road-testing o... » read more

AI, Rising Chip Complexity Complicate Prototyping

By Karen Heyman - 24 Aug, 2023 - Comments: 0

Prototyping, an essential technology for designing complex chips in tight market windows, is becoming significantly more challenging for the growing number of designs that include AI/ML. Prototyping remains one of the foundational pillars of the whole shift left movement, allowing software to be developed and tested before actual silicon is available. That, in turn, enables multiple teams 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.

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

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

Key Technologies To Extend EUV To 14 Angstroms

Alongside high-NA EUV will be better-performing photoresists, reduced roughness using passivation and etch, and lateral etching to reduce tip-to-tip dimensions.

by Laura Peters

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

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?