Designing For Thermal


Heat has emerged as a major concern for semiconductors in every form factor, from digital watches to data centers, and it is becoming more of a problem at advanced nodes and in advanced packages where that heat is especially difficult to dissipate. Temperatures at the base of finFETs and GAA FETs can differ from those at the top of the transistor structures. They also can vary depending on h... » read more

A Multi-Level Analog IC Design Flow For Fast Performance Estimation Using Template-Based Layout Generators And Structural Models


Analog IC design is a very challenging task as essential information is missing in the early design stages. Because the simulation of larger designs is exceedingly computationally expensive at lower abstraction levels, conservative assumptions are usually applied that often result in suboptimal performances such as area and power consumption. In order to enable both early performance estimates ... » read more

Making 5G More Reliable


The rollout of 5G is a complex and monumental effort involving multiple separate systems that need to function flawlessly together in real-time, making it difficult to determine where problems might arise, or how and when to test for them. Investments in 5G have been underway for the better part of a decade, and the technology is considered the next huge growth opportunity for mobile devices... » read more

Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing


Automotive, mobility California will ban the sale of new gasoline vehicles so that by 2035 100% of new cars and light trucks sold in California will be zero-emission vehicles. NXP Semiconductors announced multi-year supply agreements for its S32 family. Agreements to supply the S32 domain and zonal automotive processors to OEMs will include upcoming 5nm ASIL-D processors. Keysight Techno... » read more

New Uses For AI In Chips


Artificial intelligence is being deployed across a number of new applications, from improving performance and reducing power in a wide range of end devices to spotting irregularities in data movement for security reasons. While most people are familiar with using machine learning and deep learning to distinguish between cats and dogs, emerging applications show how this capability can be use... » read more

The Reliability Of Analog Integrated Circuits And Their Simulation-Aided Verification


Different challenges have to be overcome when designing integrated circuits. Besides schematic and layout design work, verification in view of the non-ideal behavior of circuits and semiconductor technologies in particular is also relevant. The designed circuits have to work at specific operating voltages and within ambient temperature ranges and be robust in terms of process fluctuations ... » read more

Heterogenous Integration Creating New IP Opportunities


The design IP market has long been known for constant change and evolution, but the industry trend toward heterogenous integration and chiplets is creating some new challenges and opportunities. Companies wanting to stake out a claim in this area have to be nimble, because there will be many potential standards introduced, and they are likely to change quickly as the industry explores what is r... » read more

Using AI To Speed Up Edge Computing


AI is being designed into a growing number of chips and systems at the edge, where it is being used to speed up the processing of massive amounts of data, and to reduce power by partitioning and prioritization. That, in turn, allows systems to act upon that data more rapidly. Processing data at the edge rather than in the cloud provides a number of well-documented benefits. Because the physi... » read more

Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing


Automotive, mobility The head of Tesla’s Autopilot division — Andrej Karpathy — resigned from the company after Tesla laid off 200 people in its Autopilot division and the U.S. National Highway Transportation Safety Administration broadened its safety investigation of Tesla’s Autopilot. The NHTSA last month broadened its August 2021 investigation, which was looking at why Tesla cars on... » read more

Variation Making Trouble In Advanced Packages


Variation is becoming increasingly problematic as chip designs become more heterogeneous and targeted by application, making it difficult to identify the root cause of problems or predict what can go wrong and when. Concerns about variation traditionally have been confined to the most advanced nodes, where transistor density is highest and where manufacturing processes are still being fine-t... » read more

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