Analyzing Electro-Photonic Systems


The design and analysis of electro-optical systems is pushing tools into the complex multi-physics domain, making it challenging to create models that execute at reasonable cost — especially when they include thermal impacts. The lack of models and standards also is slowing the progression of the technology. Still the advantages are worth it to those willing to make the investment. Trad... » read more

Modeling Chips From Atoms To Systems


Complexity in hardware design is spilling over to other disciplines, including software, manufacturing, and new materials, creating issues for how to model more data at multiple abstraction levels. Challenges are growing around which abstraction level to use for a particular stage of the design, when to use it, and which data to include. Those decisions are becoming more difficult at each ne... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


Tools Cadence teamed up with Tower Semiconductor to release a silicon-validated SP4T RF SOI switch reference design flow using the Cadence Virtuoso Design Platform and RF Solution. The reference design flow targets advanced 5G wireless, wireline infrastructure, and automotive IC product development and include a set of mixed-signal and RF design, simulation, system analysis and signoff tools t... » read more

Impact Of GAA Transistors At 3/2nm


The chip industry is poised for another change in transistor structure as gate-all-around (GAA) FETs replace finFETs at 3nm and below, creating a new set of challenges for design teams that will need to be fully understood and addressed. GAA FETs are considered an evolutionary step from finFETs, but the impact on design flows and tools is still expected to be significant. GAA FETs will offer... » read more

Condition Monitoring Of Drive Trains By Data Fusion Of Acoustic Emission And Vibration Sensors


Early damage detection and classification by condition monitoring systems is crucial to enable predictive maintenance of manufacturing systems and industrial facilities. The data analysis can be improved by applying machine learning algorithms and fusion of data from heterogenous sensors. This paper presents an approach for a step-wise integration of classifications gained from vibration and ac... » read more

Adding Circuit Aging To Variability


Moving to a smaller node usually means another factor becomes important. The industry has become accustomed to doing process, temperature, voltage (PVT) corner analysis, but now it has to add aging into that mix. The problem is that planning for circuit aging is no longer a purely statistical process. Aging is dependent on activity over the lifetime of the device. Tools need to be modified a... » read more

Functional Safety: Current Status And Perspectives With A View Toward Standardization Bodies


Functional safety is a topic highly driven by standards. This is due in part to legislation and regulation, but it also arises from the fact that functional safety spans a wide range of fields. Even before specific standards were introduced, there were products that met the social consensus on safety. For example, carmakers were making cars that were safe and incorporated electrical and elec... » read more

Designing Chips In A ‘Lawless’ Industry


The guideposts for designing chips are disappearing or becoming less relevant. While engineers today have many more options for customizing a design, they have little direction about what works best for specific applications or what the return on investment will be for those efforts. For chip architects, this is proving to be an embarrassment of riches. However, that design freedom comes wit... » read more

Chipmakers Getting Serious About Integrated Photonics


Integrating photonics into semiconductors is gaining traction, particularly in heterogeneous multi-die packages, as chipmakers search for new ways to overcome power limitations and deal with increasing volumes of data. Power has been a growing concern since the end of Dennard scaling, which happened somewhere around the 90nm node. There are more transistors per mm², and the wires are thinne... » read more

Getting Realistic About AI


By Olaf Enge-Rosenblatt and Andy Heinig The topic of artificial intelligence (AI) is omnipresent today, both in the news and on popular science shows. The number of possibilities for AI methods to assist people in making decisions are expanding rapidly. There are three main reasons for this: The development of new AI methods (deep learning, reinforcement learning); The continuous ... » read more

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