Users Talk Back On Standards Process

By Brian Bailey - 23 Mar, 2017 - Comments: 0

One of the major themes of DVCon this year was the standard that currently goes by the name of Portable Stimulus (see related story, Portable Stimulus – The Name Must Change). It is not ready for prime time yet, but there was plenty to hear and learn about the emerging standard, including what users think about it and the standardization process. The panel gave the users the opportunity to vo... » read more

Carving Up Verification

By Ed Sperling - 23 Mar, 2017 - Comments: 0

Anirudh Devgan, executive vice president and general manager of [getentity id="22032" e_name="Cadence's"] System & Verification Group, sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to discuss the evolution of verification. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: What’s changing in [getkc id="10" kc_name="verification"]? Devgan: Parallelism, greater capacity and multiple engine... » read more

Quality Issues Widen

By Ed Sperling - 06 Mar, 2017 - Comments: 0

As the amount of semiconductor content in cars, medical and industrial applications increases, so does the concern about how long these devices will function properly—and what exactly that means. Quality is frequently a fuzzy concept. In mobile phones, problems have ranged from bad antenna placement, which resulted in batteries draining too quickly, to features that take too long to load. ... » read more

The Week In Review: Design

By Jesse Allen - 17 Feb, 2017 - Comments: 0

Tools Mentor Graphics launched the company's third generation data-center friendly emulation platform, Veloce Strato. The emulator has a capacity of 2.5BG when fully loaded, and total capacity can be increased by linking emulators. It has available slots for 64 Advanced Verification Boards (AVBs) and fully loaded consumes up to 50KW (22.7 W/Mgate) of power. Aldec uncorked the latest versi... » read more

Test More Complex For Cars, IoT

By Ann Mutschler - 15 Feb, 2017 - Comments: 0

With increasing focus on safety-critical semiconductors—driven by ADAS, IoT, and security—functional safety concerns are going through the roof. Engineering teams are scrambling to determine how to conduct better in-field or online testing because test no longer can be an afterthought. This has been a common theme across the automotive ecosystem for the past few years, and as the automot... » read more

Finding The Unexpected In High Performance Designs

By Russell Klein - 09 Feb, 2017 - Comments: 0

It was growing dark as I drove a winding road on Mt. Hood, deep in the American northwest forest. The firs were thick, creating a lot of shadows and making it tough to see things clearly. Then out of the corner of my eye, I swear I saw a 10-foot “man” covered with brown fur. It looked a lot like a Wookie. But everyone knows Wookies aren’t real. It had to be Bigfoot! I slammed on th... » read more

2017: Tool And Methodology Shifts

By Brian Bailey - 26 Jan, 2017 - Comments: 0

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

Hybrid Simulation Picks Up Steam

By Ann Mutschler - 26 Jan, 2017 - Comments: 0

As electronic products shift from hardware-centric to software-directed, design teams are relying increasingly on a simulation approach that includes multiple engines—and different ways to use those engines—to encompass as much of the system as possible. How engineers go about using these approaches, and even how they define them, varies greatly from one company to the next. Sometimes it... » read more

EDA, IP Up 7%

By Ed Sperling - 22 Dec, 2016 - Comments: 0

EDA and IP growth increased to $2.094 billion in Q3, a 7% gain over the $1.958 billion reported for the same period in 2015, according to just released data from the Electronic System Design Alliance Market Statistics Service. All geographic regions reported growth last quarter. So did computer-aided engineering, the largest single category, which grew 5.0% to $666.7 million in Q3, up from $... » read more

Tools For Heterogeneous System Development

By Brian Bailey - 22 Dec, 2016 - Comments: 1

System architects look to both heterogeneous and homogeneous computing when there are no other options available, but the current thinking is that a system-level software methodology could simplify the design, ease integration of various blocks, and potentially improve performance for less power. While the theory appears sound enough, implementing it has turned out to be harder than expected. ... » read more

← Older posts Newer posts →

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

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.

by Bryon Moyer

tag: emulation