Big Shift In SoC Verification


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss software-driven verification with Ken Knowlson, principal engineer at Intel; Mark Olen, product manager for the Design Verification Technology Division of Mentor Graphics; Steve Chappell, senior manager for CAE technology and verification at Synopsys; Frank Schirrmeister, group director for product marketing of the System Development Suite at Cadenc... » read more

SoC Integration Mistakes


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss integration challenges with Ruggero Castagnetti, distinguished engineer at LSI; Rob Aitken, an ARM fellow; Robert Lefferts, director of engineering in Synopsys’ Solutions Group; Bernard Murphy, chief technology officer at Atrenta; and Luigi Capodieci, R&D fellow at GlobalFoundries. What follows are excerpts of that roundtable discussion. S... » read more

SoC Integration Mistakes


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss integration challenges with Ruggero Castagnetti, distinguished engineer at LSI; Rob Aitken, an ARM fellow; Robert Lefferts, director of engineering in Synopsys’ Solutions Group; Bernard Murphy, chief technology officer at Atrenta; and Luigi Capodieci, R&D fellow at GlobalFoundries. What follows are excerpts of that roundtable discussion. SE... » read more

Reducing Power Consumption in Mobile Applications with High-Speed Gear3 MIPI M-PHY IP


Mobile systems require increasing data volume for multiple chip-to-chip interfaces. The high-speed MIPI® M-PHY is tailored for mobile systems where performance, power, and efficiency are key criteria. With up to 5,824 Mbps bandwidth, the speed meets devices’ high bandwidth and scalability requirements. The M-PHY is designed to accommodate the intermittent nature of inter-chip communications ... » read more

New Challenges Emerge With FinFETs


Working at advanced process nodes is always tricky. There are new things to worry about and more rules to deal with initially, yet the promised benefit is improved performance, power and area, or cost. But at the next process node, and the one after that, there are so many variables coming into play that trying to make sense of the PPA equation is becoming much more difficult. Early reports ... » read more

The Rise Of Semiconductor IP Subsystems


The semiconductor IP (SIP) market arose when SIP vendors created IP functions that mirrored those found in the discrete semiconductor market and made those functions available to SoC designers in the form of hard or soft SIP blocks. As the SoC and SIP markets evolved, it was a natural evolution that many discrete SIP functions be converged into larger blocks that mimic system-level functions (i... » read more

Even Standard IP Isn’t Always Standard


Time to market and rising complexity are forcing the use of more third-party IP as well as increasing reuse of internally developed IP. But as more IP is added into SoCs, chipmakers are discovering some interesting things: Not all IP works together as planned, even when it’s well characterized. As with cars, performance and mileage vary greatly depending upon who’s driving—and who’s... » read more

From DFM To IFM


For the past decade the bridge between design and manufacturing was called, appropriately enough, design for manufacturing. DFM tools, which by nature cross boundaries of what previously were discrete segments in the semiconductor flow, are now critical for complex designs. They allow design teams to check early in the design process whether chips will yield sufficiently and to incorporate rule... » read more

Experts At The Table: Who Takes Responsibility?


By Ed Sperling Semiconductor Engineering sat down with John Koeter, vice president of marketing and AEs for IP and systems at Synopsys; Mike Stellfox, technical leader of the verification solutions architecture team at Cadence; Laurent Moll, CTO at Arteris; Gino Skulick, vice president and general manager of the SDMS business unit at eSilicon; Mike Gianfagna, vice president of corporate market... » read more

IP-XACT Becoming More Useful


Accellera created analog/mixed signal extensions to the IEEE IP-XACT standard, and the standards group will recommend an update to the overall standard later this year to make it more useful for IP integration. IP-XACT has been considered a great idea since its introduction in 2009 because it allows IP makers to add metadata to their IP—information needed to integrate it into complex desig... » read more

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