Is Design Innovation Slowing?


Paul Teich, principal analyst for Tirias Research, gave a provocative talk at the recent DAC conference entitled, "Is Integration Leaving Less Room for Design Innovation?" The answer isn't as simple as the question might suggest. "Integration used to be a driver for increasing the functionality of silicon," Teich said. "Increasingly, it will be used to incorporate more features of an entire ... » read more

Tech Talk: Timing Closure


Arteris' George Janac talks about timing closure issues in advanced chips and why this has reared its head again for the first time in a decade.   Related Stories Timing Closure Issues Resurface Adding more features and more power states is making it harder to design chips at 10nm and 7nm. » read more

Top 7 Verification Trends For 2017—Changes In The Game Of Ecosystems


As the year 2016 comes to a close, how did my predictions from last year hold up to reality? They were all about horizontal and vertical integration. Spoiler alert—they almost all have moved closer to reality. Going forward into 2017, some of the trends will intensify, but the most interesting trend to watch will be how the game of ecosystems in the areas of mobile, server, and intelligent sy... » read more

System Performance Analysis At ARM


Performance analysis is a vital task in modern SoC design. An under-designed SoC may run too slowly to keep up with the demands of the system. An over-designed SoC will consume too much power and require more expensive IP blocks. At ARM we want to help our partners build SoCs that deliver the best performance within their power and area budgets. The simple truth is that this is more difficul... » read more

No More Easy IP Money


The semiconductor intellectual property ([getkc id="43" kc_name="IP"]) industry is two decades old, but questions are still being asked about what's wrong with it and what needs to be fixed. Normally these kinds of issues are reserved for fast-moving, young industries, not one that is the backbone of semiconductors. Design reuse has become an indispensable part of the design of nearly all el... » read more

What Goes Wrong With IP


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to talk about the future of IP with Rob Aitken, R&D fellow at [getentity id="22186" comment="ARM"]; Mike Gianfagna, vice president of marketing at [getentity id="22242" e_name="eSilicon"]; Judd Heape, vice president of product applications at Apical; and Bernard Murphy, an independent industry consultant. What follows are excerpts of that discussion, which... » read more

Bridging Hardware And Software


Since the advent of embedded systems there has been a struggle between hardware engineers trying to understand the mindset of their software counterparts, and vice versa. That struggle is alive and well today—and it's costing everyone money. This divide is rife with passion, territoriality and misunderstanding. It has delayed tapeouts, created errors and inefficiencies that take time and e... » read more

What Goes Wrong With IP


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to talk about the future of IP with Rob Aitken, R&D fellow at [getentity id="22186" comment="ARM"]; Mike Gianfagna, vice president of marketing at [getentity id="22242" e_name="eSilicon"]; Judd Heape, vice president of product applications at Apical; and Bernard Murphy, an independent industry consultant. What follows are excerpts of that discussion, which... » read more

Tech Talk: SoC Protocol Debug


Bernie DeLay, group director for verification IP R&D at Synopsys, talks about what goes wrong in complex SoCs, how so-called standard pieces play together, and where are the gotchas in re-use. [youtube vid=AaY_AmdjUpo] » read more

Who’s Calling The Shots


As discussed in part one of this report, OEMs are making more of the decisions about what goes into a system design. A large part of this shift involves software, which falls on many plates throughout the ecosystem. Making sure all of the layers of software interoperate and integrate well together is no small feat, and it is growing in complexity at every turn as systems becomes more sophist... » read more

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