Power, Standards And The IoT


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss power, standards and the IoT with Jerry Frenkil, director of open standards at [getentity id="22055" comment="Si2"]; Frank Schirrmeister, group director of product marketing of the System Development Suite at [getentity id="22032" e_name="Cadence"]; Randy Smith, vice president of marketing at [getentity id="22605" e_name="Sonics"]; and Vojin Zivojno... » read more

Low-Power Considerations For IoT Devices


The concept of the Internet of Things has produced plenty of fanciful thinking about what’s possible. There are some wonderfully creative idea, not all of them practical. That's too bad, because there are ample areas that could benefit from functional IoT devices, such as: • Infrastructure sensors for buildings and bridges; • Medical sensors for use on or inside the body; • Oil drill... » read more

Tech Talk: Lower Power Embedded NVM


Jen-Tai Hsu, Kilopass' vice president of engineering, talks about lower-voltage bit cells, where they fit in IoT designs and how they affect battery life. [youtube vid=dNDkuApHumU] » read more

Micro-Architectural Exploration For Low Power Design


By Abishek Ranjan, Saurabh Shrimal and Sanjiv Narayan The adoption of finFET technology has created a tectonic shift in the chip design landscape. In addition to better performance (within the same power envelope) and higher reliability, finFETs have significantly reduced the leakage power at smaller technology nodes. At the same time, the share of dynamic power dissipation continues to rise... » read more

Stop Getting Burned By Power Consumption Surprises


Very rarely these days do we get silicon back and find that we have missed our timing or test constraints by a significant margin. We have robust EDA tools, libraries and design methodologies in place to ensure that we can cleanly signoff against these constraints. However, we do continue to see too many unfortunate “surprises” in silicon related power (energy) consumption and thermal issue... » read more

Technology Reboot Required


The International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS) has produced reports outlining the major obstacles the electronics industry faces for a long time now. It attempts to project, with a 15-year horizon, the problems that need to be solved in order to take advantage of the complete design and manufacturing ecosystem. From this, early research efforts can be started. This enabled the E... » read more

Ideal Memory IP For IoT Applications


The endless possibilities for IoT applications are driving a new wave of imaginative thinking, and for good reason. Recent surveys estimate the number of IoT devices by 2020 will be in the 50 billion units range. The numbers are far too high to ignore and, hence, we have entered a new era of imaginative and creative thinking! To put this in perspective, IoT applications are growing many time... » read more

Executive Insight: Charlie Cheng


Charlie Cheng, CEO of Kilopass, sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to talk about issues with current memory types and why the market is ready for disruptive approaches to reduce power and cost. SE: What's changing in the memory space? Cheng: Memory is a very important building block. It's a foundation and a commodity for a chip and for the system, but if you look at the big picture, ... » read more

Two Constraints-Based Techniques To Address Power-Related Challenges In SoC Design


Power scheduling, power integrity targets, voltage drop—these are just a few of the power-related challenges you’re no doubt managing in your SoC designs. There aren’t any easy answers, but there are some emerging—and promising—techniques. Two such techniques, according to University of Toronto Professor Farid Najm, are constraints generation and constraints-based verification. “... » read more

Tech Talk: Power Emulation


Jean-Marie Brunet, marketing director for Mentor Graphics' Emulation Division, talks about why hardware-assisted verification is now required for power and where it works best. [youtube vid=Mb63cbjbZ_I] » read more

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