The Week In Review: Design

By Ed Sperling - 28 Feb, 2014 - Comments: 0

Tools Cadence rolled out a new verification planning and management tool that is based on SQL, which greatly improves functionality and performance and offers multi-user, multi-engine and multi-analysis capabilities. Database technology—in this case, Structured Query Language—remains one of the very few software platforms that can harness multiple processors effectively. Synopsys unveil... » read more

Under One Roof

By Ed Sperling - 12 Sep, 2013 - Comments: 0

By Ed Sperling Microsoft’s decision to buy Nokia’s phone business, Apple’s move to build its own chips to more effectively run its software, and Google’s effort to develop its own hardware for next-generation platforms such as Google Glass mark an interesting reversal in the electronics industry. Disaggregation was the answer to slow-moving giants such as big-iron companies. Startin... » read more

Foundries Eye 300mm Analog Fabs

By Mark LaPedus - 18 Jul, 2013 - Comments: 0

By Mark LaPedus In 2009, Texas Instruments changed the semiconductor landscape when it opened the industry’s first 300mm fab for analog chips. Until then, analog chip production was conducted in fabs at 200mm wafer sizes and below. With a 300mm fab, TI potentially could gain a die-size and cost advantage over its analog rivals. On paper, a 300mm wafer provides 2.5 times more chips than a... » read more

Cellular Stranglehold?

By Ann Mutschler - 08 Nov, 2012 - Comments: 0

Do you ever feel like you are completely at the mercy of your cellular service provider? Yeah, me too. Not only did I have to change providers when I relocated, I had to buy a new phone of course. Since my old phone and my new phone were both iPhones, I thought for sure I could use the same car charger….but no dice. This fact has bothered me for quite some time because it made no sense to ... » read more

The Good And Bad Of Models

By Ed Sperling - 27 Sep, 2012 - Comments: 0

By Ann Steffora Mutschler Driven by fierce competition and the fact that socket decisions are made long before silicon is manufactured, semiconductor companies today ship models and virtual prototypes to their OEMs very early in hopes of locking in the socket. Admittedly, this has been happening for some time, but due to complexity and the need for flexibility of models and virtual platf... » read more

Analog In The 300mm Era

By Adrienne Downey - 31 Jul, 2012 - Comments: 0

By Adrienne Downey Semico forecasts the 2012 analog market will grow 5.1% to $44.5 billion, up from $42.3 billion in 2011. This is higher than the 0.1% analog revenue growth experienced in 2011 but lower than the 12.6% growth expected in 2013. Growth is coming from automotive electronics, the energy industry, wireless communications, and healthcare diagnostic and monitoring devices. In a re... » read more

Gene’s Law Meets EDA

By Ed Sperling - 17 Mar, 2011 - Comments: 0

By Pallab Chatterjee What will be the next major improvement that will cut power levels by an order of magnitude? That question was the basis of a roundtable discussion at the recent ISSC conference. Current technology provides incremental improvements each year, but the next generation of electronic systems will require dramatic changes and innovation. This premise is based on Gene’s Law... » read more

Healthy Living Electronics Dominated By Power

By Ed Sperling - 10 Feb, 2011 - Comments: 0

By Pallab Chatterjee The theme for this years ISSCC (International Solid State Circuits Conference) is “Electronics for Healthy Living.” In addition to the new microprocessors, memory and data converter technologies, the focus and keynotes are directed toward health-care products. The common theme between all the talks is that health-care is being driven by mobility, information flow, a... » read more

Lines Blur Between Processor And Microcontroller

By Ed Sperling - 13 May, 2009 - Comments: 0

By Ed Sperling Big changes are happening in the microcontroller market. That statement alone should give pause for most design engineers and raise their level of skepticism. In the past, microcontrollers were a steady business but not exactly an interesting one. That was before the big push toward “green” and the 65nm process node. And it was before vendors began adding logic and more fun... » read more

Writing Software For Low-Power Systems

By Ed Sperling - 15 Apr, 2009 - Comments: 0

By Ed Sperling Almost any discussion of software in low power systems these days involves some sort of multicore approach. That is particularly true at 90nm and below. At 65nm, unless there is a very distinct purpose for a low-power single-core device, it probably is utilizing at least two cores, and at 45nm the numbers can continue to rise, depending upon how many functions the chip is being... » 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

Legacy Process Nodes Going Strong

The critical, and growing, significance of mature node chips and processes.

by Bryon Moyer

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

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

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?