Testing In Context Gaining Ground


Testing in context is beginning to gain wider appeal as chip complexity increases, and as ICs are deployed in more safety-critical and mission-critical applications. While design in context has been the norm for SoCs for some time, a similar approach in test has been slow going. Cell-aware testing technology was first described a decade ago, and since then its adoption has been modest. But w... » read more

Six Things You Need To Know About USB Instrument Control


With plug-and-play connectivity and the near ubiquity of USB ports on modern PCs and laptops, USB has become a popular choice for controlling stand-alone instrumentation. As more instrument manufacturers begin to include USB ports on their devices, it is important to understand several issues surrounding USB to ensure the longevity of your test system. To read more, click here. » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Chipmakers United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC) has announced the readiness of its new 22nm process. The process enables new 22nm designs or allows customers to migrate from 28nm to 22nm. UMC’s 22nm maintains its existing 28nm design architectures. UMC's 22nm process features a 10% area reduction, better power-to-performance ratio and enhanced RF capabilities, compared to the company’s 2... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


Cadence signed a deal to buy National Instruments’ AWR business unit for about $160 million in cash, a move that Cadence describes as a way to broaden its market into intelligent system design. AWR’s strength is high-frequency RF design automation tools, particularly in the millimeter wave and microwave spectrums, which are critical for radar and 5G. It also has technology for III-V materia... » read more

Week In Review: IoT, Security, Auto


Internet of Things SiFive is bringing RISC-V to IoT makers and university developers through the RISC-V-based SiFive Learn Initiative, an open-source learning package that can be used to create a low-cost RISC-V hardware compatible with AWS IoT Core. The development platform SiFive Learn Inventor has a software package and education enablement course. It includes: The programmable SiFive Lear... » read more

Cadence To Buy NI’s AWR Unit For $160M


Cadence signed a deal to buy National Instruments' AWR business unit for about $160 million in cash, a move that Cadence describes as a way to broaden its market into intelligent system design. AWR's strength is high-frequency RF design automation tools, particularly in the millimeter wave and microwave spectrums, which are critical for radar and 5G. Both of those technologies are expected t... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Market research Smartphone shipments in China stood at 98.9 million units in the third quarter of 2019, down 3.6% year-on-year, according to IDC. Of that, 5G phone shipments in China have grown from virtually zero not long ago to 485,000 units in the third quarter of 2019, according to IDC. Vendors shipped devices amid the launch of commercial 5G services in October. The early smartphone le... » read more

Week in Review: IoT, Security, Automotive


Connectivity, 5G Rambus has revealed a PCI Express 5.0 interface on advanced 7nm finFET process node for heterogenous computing aimed at performance-intensive uses, such as AI, data center, HPC, storage and 400GbE networking. With a PHY and a digital controller core recently acquired Northwest Logic, the interface has 32 GT/s (gigatransfers per second) bandwidth per lane with 128 GB/s bandwidt... » read more

Different Ways To Improve Chip Reliability


A push toward greater reliability in safety- and mission-critical applications is prompting some innovative approaches in semiconductor design, manufacturing, and post-production analysis of chip behavior. While quality over time has come under intensive scrutiny in automotive, where German carmakers require chips to last 18 years with zero defects, it isn't the only market demanding extende... » read more

Should We Even Be Talking About 6G?


Friends and coworkers have been sending me a lot of articles lately about 6G, with snappy headlines that seem to suggest that 5G is already a thing of the past. As a marketing manager working on cellular technology, they want to know what I think. On the one hand, I’m excited to see that the hype surrounding 5G is shining a spotlight on wireless communications research and that visionaries ar... » read more

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