200mm Demand Surges


A surge in demand for various chips is causing shortages for select 200mm foundry capacity as well as 200mm fab equipment, and it shows no signs of abating in 2021. Foundry customers will face a shortfall of 200mm capacity at select foundries at least in the first half of 2021, and perhaps beyond. Those customers will need to plan ahead to ensure they obtain enough 200mm capacity in 2021. Ot... » read more

Blog Review: Dec. 16


Arm's Benoit Labbe investigates why battery monitoring is so important for a low-power microcontroller and shows how it was implemented in the M0N0 MCU while drawing a fraction of a nW in typical conditions. Siemens EDA's Harry Foster takes a look at how much of their time FPGA design engineers spend on verification, and the tasks that keep verification engineers the busiest. Synopsys' Sc... » read more

Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing


Automotive Self-driving car company Cruise now has driverless cars on the streets of San Francisco, Calif., reports the San Francisco Chronicle. Cruise, which is backed by General Motors, is testing five driverless cars in the urban — and very hilly — environment of San Francisco. Cruise is using an EV — the Chevy Bolt — as a test vehicle. At Level 4 driving, the cars will not have a w... » read more

Blog Review: Dec. 2


Mentor's Harry Foster investigates the effectiveness of today’s FPGA verification processes in terms of nontrivial bug escapes into production as part of the 2020 Wilson Research Group Functional Verification Study. Synopsys' Chris Clark points to how integral sensors are to the modern vehicle and key design considerations for making them more effective, safe, and reliable. Cadence's Pa... » read more

Blog Review: Nov. 11


Mentor's Chris Spear proposes mixing together the compactness of the field macro style with the preciseness of the do methods when writing a UVM transaction class. Cadence's Paul McLellan looks back at the history of EPROM, some of the difficulty with actually erasing it, and the subsequent development of EEPROM. Synopsys' Tuomo Untinen explains three WPA2 authentication vulnerabilities r... » read more

Blog Review: Oct. 28


Synopsys' Jacob Wilson provides some tips for how to prepare for the upcoming ISO SAE 21434 cybersecurity standard for road vehicles, starting with a security plan and understanding of risk levels. Cadence's Paul McLellan checks out Arm's first face-to-face wafer-bonded design, why it might be desirable, and some important aspects of how the proof-of-concept was developed. In a video, Men... » read more

Regaining The Edge In U.S. Chip Manufacturing


The United States is developing new strategies to prevent it from falling further behind Korea, Taiwan, and perhaps even China in semiconductor manufacturing, as trade tensions and national security concerns continue to grow. For years, the U.S. has been a leader in the development of new chip products like GPUs and microprocessors. But from a chip manufacturing standpoint, the U.S. is losin... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Chipmakers and OEMs NXP has announced the grand opening of its 150mm (6-inch) RF gallium nitride (GaN) fab in Chandler, Ariz. This is said to be the most advanced fab dedicated to 5G RF power amplifiers in the United States. NXP’s new Chandler-based GaN fab is qualified now, with initial products ramping in the market and expected to reach full capacity by the end of 2020. GaN, a III-V techn... » read more

Compiling And Optimizing Neural Nets


Edge inference engines often run a slimmed-down real-time engine that interprets a neural-network model, invoking kernels as it goes. But higher performance can be achieved by pre-compiling the model and running it directly, with no interpretation — as long as the use case permits it. At compile time, optimizations are possible that wouldn’t be available if interpreting. By quantizing au... » read more

Power Amp Wars Begin For 5G


Demand is increasing for power amplifier chips and other RF devices for 5G base stations, setting the stage for a showdown among different companies and technologies. The power amplifier device is a key component that boosts the RF power signals in base stations. It's based on two competitive technologies, silicon-based LDMOS or RF gallium nitride (GaN). GaN, a III-V technology, outperforms ... » read more

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