Managing Dynamic Power


Working with finFETs is a study in contrasts. While leakage is now under control for the first time in several process generations due to the advent of different gate technology, dynamic power density caused by tightly packed transistors and higher clock speeds has become the big issue. “FinFET technology helps with reducing static/leakage power so when your logic is not active, you can sh... » read more

Rethinking Power


Power typically has been the last factor to be considered in the PPA equation, and it usually was somebody else's problem. Increasingly it's everyone's problem, and EDA companies are beginning to look at power differently than in the past. While the driving forces vary by market and by process node, the need to save energy at every node and in almost all designs is pervasive. In the server m... » read more

IP And FinFETs At Advanced Nodes


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss IP and finFETs at advanced nodes with Bernard Murphy, CTO of Atrenta; Warren Savage, president and CEO of IPextreme; Aveek Sarkar, vice president of engineering and product support at Ansys-Apache; Randy Smith, vice president of marketing at Sonics. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: As we push into the next nodes, we’ve got a ... » read more

FinFET Impacts For Reducing Physical IP Power Consumption


FinFET devices were developed to address the need for improved gate control to suppress leakage current (IOFF); DIBL (drain-induced barrier lowering); and process‐induced variability below 32-nanometer. FinFET technology is now in volume production. To fully realize the advantages of FinFET devices, physical IP must follow the same trajectory that has benefited digital design. That include... » read more

Experts At The Table: Low-Power Verification


By Ed Sperling Low-Power/High-Performance Engineering sat down to discuss power format changes with Sushma Hoonavera-Prasad, design engineer in Broadcom’s mobile platform group; John Biggs, consultant engineer for R&D and co-founder of ARM; Erich Marschner, product marketing manager at Mentor Graphics; Qi Wang, technical marketing group director at Cadence; and Jeffrey Lee, corporate ap... » read more

Too Hot To Handle


By Ann Steffora Mutschler It used to be that a device could be designed to a thermal design power. The worst case power scenario would be imagined, and the device would be designed with that in mind. But those good old days are gone. Especially for consumer devices, how a device is going to behave with respect to time, or how people are going to use it, must be understood as completely a... » read more

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