Reducing Post-Placement Leakage With Stress-Enhanced Fill Cells


By Valeriy Sukharev, Jun-Ho Choy, Armen Kteyan and Henrik Hovsepyan As downward scaling of transistors continues, optimizing power consumption for mobile devices is a major concern. Power consumption consists of two components: dynamic and static. Dynamic (active) power is used while the chip is performing various functions, while static (leakage) power is consumed by leakage current (Figure... » read more

Think In Blocks


It always seems to come back to LEGOs, doesn’t it? Earlier this year I wrote about Google Project Ara, the so-called “LEGO” smart phone architecture unveiled in April. Project Ara uses the MIPI Alliance UniPro and M-PHY protocols as the backbone for a modular electronics architecture inside a smart phone “endoskeleton.” Using electro-permanent magnets (they don’t need a perma... » read more

Tackling RF Desense Challenges At The Source


Just imagine you are stepping out of the electronics store with your brand new smart phone. You eagerly scroll down your contacts to dial your best friend and proudly tell them the great news, but as soon as they pick up, your reception is gone! What happened? This problem is commonly described as desense, a degradation of the sensitivity of the receiver due to external noise sources. Desens... » read more

ARM and Qualcomm: Enabling The Next Mobile Computing Revolution With Highly Integrated ARMv8-A Based SoCs


This joint white paper by ARM and Qualcomm examines the forces behind the recent mobile computing revolution and what will be required for companies to succeed in future evolutions of mobile computing. This paper includes how the next generation of the ARM® architecture, ARMv8-A, will enable the next mobile revolution based around the ARM AArch64 64-bit instruction set while providing full sup... » read more

Low-Power, High-Performance Memory Systems


Mobile devices and their demand for rapid innovation have fundamentally and forever changed the semiconductor industry. These devices have fueled tremendous innovation in the last few years to bring about drastic improvements in performance, power and cost efficiency. They also demand condensed product development cycles, which accelerate the rate and need for innovation. The only thing that ha... » read more

Mobile Device Security


As the functionality of mobile devices has increased, so have the threats. These devices make attractive targets, given the sensitivity of user and corporate data they process and store, their emerging use for viewing protected content and conducting sensitive banking and payment transactions. Until recently, hardware and software based defenses for mobile platforms lagged behind those found in... » read more

big.LITTLE Technology: The Future of Mobile


With the evolution from the first mobile phones through smartphones to today’s superphones and tablets, the demand for compute performance in mobile devices has grown at an incredible rate. Today’s devices need to service smarter and more complex interactions, such as voice and gesture control, combined with seamless and reliable content delivery. Gaming and user interfaces have also grown ... » read more

Halloween Is Going Mobile


With the end of October around the corner, my children are frantically thinking about what they want to dress up as for Halloween. It is interesting that both of them chose a costume that has something to do with a mobile video game. My daughter will be dressing up as a red angry bird while my son wants to go as a wizard, where he is using clash of clans as the example of what a wizard should l... » read more

The Integrated IP Subsystem: A Converging SoC Solution


The consumer device market is witnessing incredible market space convergence between mobile handheld, automotive, and home electronics. IP vendors, engineers, and system design engineers face a multitude of challenges when designing and developing ICs, systems, or subsystems for the next great portable device. The next cell phone for instance, will not only be a multimedia player, but also a de... » read more

Five Emerging DRAM Interfaces You Should Know For Your Next Design


Producing DRAM chips in commodity volumes and prices to meet the demands of the mobile market is no easy feat, and demands for increased bandwidth, low power consumption, and small footprint don’t help. This paper reviews and compares five next-generation DRAM technologies— LPDDR3, LPDDR4, Wide I/O 2, HBM, and HMC—that address these challenges. To view this white paper, click here. » read more

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