Auto Network Speeds Rise As Carmakers Prep For Autonomy


In-vehicle networks are starting to migrate from domain architectures to zonal architectures, an approach that will simplify and speed up communication in a vehicle using fewer protocols, less wiring, and ultimately lower cost. Zonal architectures will partition vehicles into zones that are more manageable and flexible, but getting there will take time. There is so much legacy technology in ... » read more

AI Races To The Edge


AI is becoming increasingly sophisticated and pervasive at the edge, pushing into new application areas and even taking on some of the algorithm training that has been done almost exclusively in large data centers using massive sets of data. There are several key changes behind this shift. The first involves new chip architectures that are focused on processing, moving, and storing data more... » read more

Use Advanced DFT And Silicon Bring Up To Accelerate AI Chip Design


The market for AI chips is growing quickly, with the 2022 revenue of $20B expected to grow to over $300B by 2030. To keep up with the demand and stay competitive, AI chip designers set aggressive time-to-market goals. Design teams looking for ways to shave significant time off chip development time can look to advanced DFT and silicon bring up techniques described in this paper, including hiera... » read more

Blog Review: Dec. 6


Cadence's Vinod Khera checks out potential implications of generative AI for EDA, including how it could increase the learning rate of students and reduce the rising verification cost. Synopsys' Kiran Vittal considers the driving factors behind RISC-V's growth and why it is becoming increasingly important for applications ranging from automotive to 5G mobile, AI, and data centers. Siemens... » read more

AI Accelerator Architectures Poised For Big Changes


AI is driving a frenzy of activity in the chip world as companies across the semiconductor ecosystem race to include AI in their product lineup. The challenge now is how to make AI run faster, use less energy, and to be able to leverage it from the edge to the data center — particularly with the rollout of large language models. On the hardware side, there are two main approaches for accel... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


By Susan Rambo, Gregory Haley, and Liz Allan Amkor plans to invest about $2 billion in a new advanced packaging and test facility in Peoria, Arizona. When finished, it will employ about 2,000 people and will be the largest outsourced advanced packaging facility in the U.S. The first phase of the construction is expected to be completed and operational within two to three years. Synopsys p... » read more

System State Challenges Widen


Knowing the state of a system is essential for many analysis and debug tasks, but it's becoming more difficult in heterogeneous systems that are crammed with an increasing array of features. There is a limit as to how many things engineers can keep track of, and the complexity of today's systems extends far beyond that. Hierarchy and abstraction are used to help focus on the important aspect... » read more

EDA Pushes Deeper Into AI


EDA vendors are ramping up the use of AI/ML in their tools to help chipmakers and systems companies differentiate their products. In some cases, that means using AI to design AI chips, where the number and breadth of features and potential problems is exploding. What remains to be seen is how well these AI-designed chips behave over time, and where exactly AI benefits design teams. And all o... » read more

3D-ICs May Be The Least-Cost Option


When 2.5D and 3D packaging were first conceived, the general consensus was that only the largest semiconductor houses would be able to afford them, but development costs are quickly coming under control. In some cases, these advanced packages actually may turn out to be the lowest-cost options. With stacked die [1], each die is considered to be a complete functional block or sub-system. In t... » read more

Help, 3D-IC Is Stuck In A Country Song


Every time I focus on three-dimensional (3D) integrated circuit (IC) design, I start hearing the Luke Bryan song “Rain Makes Corn, Corn Makes Whiskey.” Not because I need a strong drink to work with 3D-IC designs, but because there is a similar, although slightly more complicated, series of cause and effect issues that impact 3D-ICs. Pushing electrons through very thin metal wires and switc... » read more

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