SoCs Go Mainstream


By Ed Sperling The monolithic ASIC, which has been the bread-and-butter of chipmakers for decades, is giving way to systems on a chip among mainstream chipmakers and at mainstream process nodes. This shift has been overhyped, overpromised and slow to materialize. While SoCs have been common for years in mobile electronics and for high-performance platforms such as gaming consoles, they have... » read more

When Stacked Die Make Sense


By Javier DeLaCruz There are two general flavors of 3D-TSV technology. Images for these can be seen in the previous blog entry The Future of ASICs in 3D. 3D-IC has vias in silicon containing active circuitry. 2.5D is similar, but uses passive silicon, glass or organic interposers to enable very fine pitch interconnection between the active die mounted on top. There is some discussion about ... » read more

Experts At The Table: Low-Power Verification


By Ed Sperling Low-Power Engineering sat down to discuss the problems of identifying and verifying power issues with Barry Pangrle, solutions architect for low-power design at Mentor Graphics; Krishna Balachandran, director of low-power verification marketing at Synopsys; Kalar Rajendiran, senior director of marketing at eSilicon; Will Ruby, senior director of technical sales and support at Ap... » read more

Derivative ICs: A Look At The Options


By Ann Steffora Mutschler With the cost of designing and producing even moderately advanced SoCs skyrocketing, semiconductor companies and systems houses must find ways to defray the cost across a larger number of end uses than ever. As such many companies have adopted a platform-based derivative design approach, with that the platform serving as the first SoC design of a new family. That s... » read more

Market Catches Up With Verification IP


By Ed Sperling Ever since verification IP was introduced it was seen as something that should be given away with purchased IP. The result was limited investment by IP vendors, frustration on the part of IP customers, and a market opportunity that nearly fizzled before it even began. But as the amount of commercially developed IP content continues to grow in ICs, the potential interactions ... » read more

Experts At The Table: Low-Power Verification


Low-Power Engineering sat down to discuss the problems of identifying and verifying power issues with Barry Pangrle, solutions architect for low-power design at Mentor Graphics; Krishna Balachandran, director of low-power verification marketing at Synopsys; Kalar Rajendiran, senior director of marketing at eSilicon; Will Ruby, senior director of technical sales and support at Apache Design; and... » read more

Experts At The Table: Low-Power Verification


Low-Power Engineering sat down to discuss the problems of identifying and verifying power issues with Barry Pangrle, solutions architect for low-power design at Mentor Graphics; Krishna Balachandran, director of low-power verification marketing at Synopsys; Kalar Rajendiran, senior director of marketing at eSilicon; Will Ruby, senior director of technical sales and support at Apache Design; and... » read more

Low-Power Verification


Low-Power Engineering talks about how to verify the power portion of semiconductor designs with Krishna Balachandran of Synopsys; Barry Pangrle of Mentor Graphics; Kalar Rajendiran of eSilicon; Will Ruby of Apache Design, and Lauro Rizzatti of Eve-USA. [youtube vid=covy6ku6RgA] » read more

Will It Work?


By Ed Sperling Estimates of how much time it takes to verify a complex SoC are still hovering around 70% of the total non-recurring engineering costs, but with more unknowns and more things to verify it’s becoming harder to keep that number from growing. Verification has always been described as an unbounded problem. You can always verify more, and just knowing when to call it quits is so... » read more

Roundtable: What’s Changing In System-Level Design


System-Level Design talks about what's changing and what's needed with Juan Rey of Mentor Graphics: Yervant Zorian of Synopsys; Michael McNamara of Cadence; Prasad Subramaniam of eSilicon; and Ravi Varadarajan of Atrenta. [youtube vid=8siiKBKD0-k] » read more

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