Verification’s Breaking Points


Verification efficiency and speed can vary significantly from one design to the next, and that variability is rising alongside growing design complexity. The result is a new level of unpredictability about how much it will cost to complete the verification process, whether it will meet narrow market windows, and whether quality will be traded off to get a chip out on time in the hopes that it c... » read more

Blog Review: Sept. 27


Synopsys' Mukul Dawar highlights the biggest changes coming to the PCIe 4.0 specification, plus a peek at what's new in PCIe 5.0. Cadence's Paul McLellan considers why EDA startups are less common than they used to be. Mentor's David Abercrombie and Alex Pearson discuss new requirements for detecting double patterning errors at advanced nodes. Rambus' Aharon Etengoff reports that secur... » read more

The Race To Autonomous Cars


To say that the race for autonomous transportation has been heating up would be a gross understatement. By now all, companies that aim to be leaders, or at least want a piece of the action have already established their presence. Some in a successful way, while others not so much. This is not a race that can be won by sprinting alone. It is a team relay where partnerships have to be formed, ... » read more

The Limits Of IP Reuse


The basic business proposition for third-party IP is that it's cheaper, faster, and less problematic to buy rather than build. But things haven't exactly worked out according to plan, either for companies that license IP or those that develop it. For [getkc id="43" kc_name="IP"] licensees, just keeping track of an endless series of updates is becoming unwieldy. Complex designs often include ... » read more

Applying Machine Learning


Sundari Mitra, co-founder and CEO of NetSpeed Systems, sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to discuss machine learning, training algorithms, what customers are struggling with today, and how startups fare in an increasingly consolidated semiconductor industry. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: Machine learning is booming. How will this change design? Mitra: This is a... » read more

IP Challenges Ahead


The revenue from semiconductor [getkc id="43" kc_name="IP"] has risen steadily to become the largest segment of the EDA industry. Industry forecasts expect it to keep growing at a CAGR of more than 10% for the next decade. Part one of this article examined the possibility those forecasts are wrong and that large semiconductor companies are likely to start bringing IP development back in hous... » read more

CCIX Enables Machine Learning


It takes a lot of technology to enable something like machine learning, and not all of it is as glamorous as neural network architectures and algorithms. Several levels below that is the actual hardware on which these run, and that brings us into the even less sexy world of interfaces. One such interface, the Cache Coherent Interconnect for Accelerators (CCIX), pronounced C6, aims to make th... » read more

The Perfect (Silicon) Marriage… Yes, It Exists


Nope, this is not Dr. Phil masquerading as a tech blogger, trying to penetrate the semiconductor market. I am no Dr. Phil, but today, rather than expound on interconnect IP and how it relates to the various trends, applications, markets, etc., I would like to tell you a story about a relationship and share an experience with one of our customers, a leading manufacturer of autonomous systems. ... » read more

The Secret Life Of Accelerators


Accelerator chips increasingly are providing the performance boost that device scaling once provided, changing basic assumptions about how data moves within an electronic system and where it should be processed. To the outside world, little appears to have changed. But beneath the glossy exterior, and almost always hidden from view, accelerator chips are becoming an integral part of most des... » read more

IoT Myth Busting


The [getkc id="76" comment="Internet of Things"] (IoT) means many things to a large number of people, but one thing is clear—every discussion involving the IoT invariably includes some rather dramatic growth predictions for how many connected devices will be sold and who will be the primary beneficiaries. While that data helps spice up speeches, and typically gets people to read and quote ... » read more

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