Transforming Silicon Bring-Up

By Brian Bailey - 26 Nov, 2019 - Comments: 0

Not too long ago, the return of first silicon from the foundry was a nail-biting moment as power was applied to the chip. Today, better verification methodologies, increased use of emulation, and more mature fabrication practices have transformed how teams utilize first silicon. It is about to be transformed again, and there are some interesting possibilities on the horizon. Much of what use... » read more

Thoroughly Verifying Complex SoCs

By Ann Mutschler - 26 Nov, 2019 - Comments: 0

The number of things that can go wrong in complex SoCs targeted at leading-edge applications is staggering, and there is no indication that verifying these chips will function as expected is going to get any easier. Heterogeneous designs developed for leading-edge applications, such as 5G, IoT, automotive and AI, are now complex systems in their own right. But they also need to work in conju... » read more

Portable Stimulus And Digital Twins

By Brian Bailey - 25 Nov, 2019 - Comments: 0

It has been a year since Accellera's Portable Test and Stimulus Specification became a standard. Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss the impact it has had, and the future direction of it, with Larry Melling, product management director for Cadence; Tom Fitzpatrick, strategic verification architect for Mentor, a Siemens Business; Tom Anderson, technical marketing consultant for OneSp... » read more

How Does A Changing Automotive Ecosystem Affect Tier-1 Suppliers?

By Richard Pugh - 07 Nov, 2019 - Comments: 0

Tier-1 automotive suppliers have an enormous opportunity in the development of autonomous vehicles (AVs). Fortune.com sees these vehicles contributing $7 trillion in economic activity by the year 2050. But this opportunity comes with a challenge: the whole supply chain is being disrupted by new participants and new technologies that are making these AVs possible. Semiconductor companies and spe... » read more

Emulation Fills The Pre-Silicon Verification Gap For Autonomous Vehicles

By Mentor, a Siemens Business - 06 Nov, 2019 - Comments: 0

Veloce emulators provide the scale and performance to ensure that automotive applications run smoothly, safely, and securely. This paper describes how emulation is used to run realistic driver scenarios, investigate vehicle dynamics, and analyze power and communications metrics — all in a platform that virtualizes the design and allows both hardware and software to be tested together or separ... » read more

Which Verification Engine When

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

Frank Schirrmeister, group director for product marketing at Cadence, talks about which tools get used throughout the design flow, from architecture to simulation, formal verification, emulation, prototyping all the way to production, how the cloud has impacted the direction of the flow, and how machine learning will impact verification. » read more

5G Needs Cohesive Pre- And Post-Silicon Verification

By Jean-Marie Brunet - 24 Oct, 2019 - Comments: 1

While 5G doesn’t start from a clean slate, it does make significant changes to the 4G architecture. These changes mean that the ecosystem from chips to operators is evolving, giving opportunities to more companies to engage in this growing market. Realignment in fronthaul, midhaul and backhaul In particular, the radio access network (RAN) has been redefined as Cloud RAN (sometimes called ... » read more

5G Verification Is Impossible Without Emulation

By Mentor, a Siemens Business - 23 Oct, 2019 - Comments: 0

Emulation, combined with a rich assortment of virtualized versions of the many protocols that 5G will require, is the only practical way of ensuring that the first round of silicon built will be the production version, able to handle all of the functions and configurations that it might be faced with and having the tight performance characteristics needed for successful integration into a 5G sy... » read more

Focus Shifts To Wasted Power

By Brian Bailey - 10 Oct, 2019 - Comments: 0

Mobile phones made the industry aware of power, but now the focus is shifting to the total energy needed to perform a task. Activity that is unnecessary to perform the intended task is wasted power, and reducing it requires some new methodologies and structural changes within development teams. There is a broadening awareness about power. "The companies doing SoCs for mobile lead the charge ... » read more

Using Emulators For Power/Performance Tradeoffs

By Ann Mutschler - 10 Oct, 2019 - Comments: 1

Emulation is becoming the tool of choice for power and performance tradeoffs, scaling to almost unlimited capacity for complex chips used in data centers, AI/ML systems and smart phones. While emulation has long been viewed as an important but expensive asset for chipmakers trying to verify and debug chips, it is now viewed as an essential component for design optimization and analysis much ... » 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

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