Training Tomorrow’s Chip Designers


With technology advancing rapidly and the growing number of open R&D projects, there is an expanding need for qualified engineers. To make this possible, practical education needs to start much earlier than after graduation. One the best ways the EDA and semiconductor industry has embraced is encouraging engineering students to cooperate with experienced engineers, technologists and indu... » read more

CEO Outlook: It Gets Much Harder From Here


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss what's changing across the semiconductor industry with Wally Rhines, CEO emeritus at Mentor, a Siemens Business; Jack Harding, president and CEO of eSilicon; John Kibarian, president and CEO of PDF Solutions; and John Chong, vice president of product and business development for Kionix. What follows are excerpts of that discussion, which was held in... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


M&A NXP will acquire Marvell's Wi-Fi Connectivity business in an all-cash, asset transaction valued at $1.76 billion. The deal includes the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth technology portfolios and related assets; the business employs approximately 550 people worldwide. The deal is expected to close by calendar Q1 2020. Tools Cadence unveiled a data center-optimized FPGA-based prototyping system, ... » read more

Why IP Quality Is So Difficult To Determine


Differentiating good IP from mediocre or bad IP is getting more difficult, in part because it depends up on how and where it is used and in part because even the best IP may work better in one system than another—even in chips developed by the same vendor. This has been one of the challenges with IP over the years. In many cases, IP is poorly characterized, regardless of whether that IP wa... » read more

Delivering High-Speed Communications: The Back Story


Back in January, I posted a blog about what it takes to deliver high-speed communication. In that post, I talked about a new test board for our high-speed 7nm 56G PAM4 & NRZ DSP-based long-reach SerDes. We collaborated with several companies to build a high-precision board that could be used to test our SerDes in a system context. At that time, we were just finishing the opening act for thi... » read more

Speeding 5G Network Infrastructure Design


As the world becomes more connected and digital, the need for more data and higher speed is evident. The increase in global internet traffic, along with decentralization of cloud and data centers, has driven wired and wireless networks to support 5G network infrastructures. 5G technology promises to enable 1,000 times more traffic, 10 times faster speed and a 10 times increase in throughput. Th... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


Tools & IP Cadence introduced the Tensilica Vision Q7 DSP, which provides up to 1.82 TOPS and is specifically optimized for simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM). The DSP has a very long instruction word (VLIW) SIMD architecture, an enhanced instruction set supporting 8/16/32-bit data types and optional VFPU support for single and half precision, and a number of iDMA enhancements in... » read more

Chiplet Momentum Builds, Despite Tradeoffs


Chip design is a series of tradeoffs. Some are technical, others are related to cost, competitive features or legal restrictions. But with the nascent 'chiplet' market, many of the established balance points are significantly altered, depending on market segments and ecosystem readiness. Chiplets provide an alternative mechanism for integrating intellectual property (IP) blocks into a semico... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


Tools & IP Cadence uncorked the latest version of JasperGold formal verification platform, providing improvements to the proof-solver algorithm and orchestration by using machine learning to select and parameterize solvers to enable faster first-time proofs and optimize successive runs for regression testing. Additionally, it increases design compilation capacity by over 2x with 50% reduct... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


ANSYS acquired the assets of DfR Solutions, a developer of automated design reliability analysis software. Founded in 2004 and based in Maryland, DfR's tool translates ECAD and MCAE data into 3D finite element models, automates thermal derating and performs thermal and mechanical analysis of electronics earlier in the design cycle. "ANSYS brings industry-leading electronic simulation capabiliti... » read more

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