Clock Domain Crossings in the FPGA World


Clock domain crossing (CDC) issues cause significant amount of failures in ASIC and FPGA devices. As FPGA complexity and performance grows, the influence of CDC issues on design functionality grows even more. This paper outlines CDC issues and their solutions for FPGA designs. Various design techniques are presented together with real-life examples for Xilinx and Intel FPGA devices. More import... » read more

Blog Review: Jan. 30


Cadence's Paul McLellan provides a primer on embedded memory types, their tradeoffs, and the emerging technologies to keep an eye on. Mentor's Matthew Ballance takes a look at how Portable Stimulus can help create better virtual sequences. Synopsys' Taylor Armerding takes a look at what the next year holds for open source, from changes in license terms to the impact of GDPR and a broader ... » read more

China’s Foundry Biz Takes Big Leap Forward


China continues to advance its foundry industry with huge investments in new fabs and technology, despite trade tensions and a slowdown in the IC market. China has the most fab projects in the world, with 30 new facilities or lines in construction or on the drawing board, according to data from SEMI’s World Fab Forecast Report. Of those, 13 fabs are targeted for the foundry market, accordi... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Chipmakers Shares of Intel fell amid lackluster results for the company, according to a report from CNBC. But Intel is also boosting its capital spending to $15.5 billion, according to the report. Here’s more on Intel from PC World. Meanwhile, Intel is expanding its research fab in Oregon, dubbed D1X, according to a report from The Oregonian. The company is in the process of building an ... » read more

Week in Review: IoT, Security, Auto


Internet of Things Tony Franklin, Intel’s general manager for Internet of Things Segments, is interviewed by Lorin Fries on how the chipmaker is helping to develop smart farming applications. “We focus primarily on high-performance computer technologies, as well as communication technologies, which have great applicability for food systems. We work closely with a broad ecosystem of partner... » read more

Embedded Phase-Change Memory Emerges


The next-generation memory market for embedded applications is becoming more crowded as another technology emerges in the arena—embedded phase-change memory. Phase-change memory is not new and has been in the works for decades. But the technology has taken longer to commercialize amid a number of technical and cost challenges. Phase-change memory, a nonvolatile memory type that stores data... » read more

Planning For 5G And The Edge


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss 5G and edge computing with Rahul Goyal, vice president in the technology and manufacturing group at Intel; John Lee, vice president and general manager of the semiconductor business unit at ANSYS; Rob Aitken, R&D fellow at Arm; and Lluis Paris, director of IP portfolio marketing at TSMC. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. Part one i... » read more

Week in Review: IoT, Security, Auto


Internet of Things A dairy barn without any people working in it. An automated greenhouse for produce. Coming soon, little robots that will weed crop fields and look for diseased plants. This is Rivendale Farms, in the countryside west of Pittsburgh, which is 175 acres serving as a beta site for agricultural Internet of Things technology. The small farm has about 150 Jersey cows, each of which... » read more

Mostly Upbeat Outlook For Chips


2019 has started with cautious optimism for the semiconductor industry, despite dark clouds that dot the horizon. Market segments such as cryptocurrencies and virtual reality are not living up to expectations, the market for smart phones appears to be saturated, and DRAM prices are dropping, leading to cut-backs in capital expenditures. EDA companies are talking about sales to China being pu... » read more

Blog Review: Jan. 16


Mentor's Harry Foster takes a look at how quickly FPGAs are adopting recent verification techniques, with formal gaining at a rapid pace. Cadence's Paul McLellan checks out the details of two new RISC-V based cores: Western Digital's open source SweRV and Esperanto's Maxion. Synopsys' Taylor Armerding digs into a recent cybersecurity report from the U.S. government and finds a troubling n... » read more

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