A Glossary For Chip And Semiconductor IP Security And Trust


A significant portion of electronic system vulnerabilities involves hardware. In 2015 the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE-MITRE) database recorded 6,488 vulnerabilities. A considerable proportion (43%) can be classified as software-assisted hardware vulnerabilities (see Fig. 1). The discovery of Meltdown and Spectre in January 2018 has sparked a series of investigations into hardware ... » read more

Scaling Formal Connectivity Checking To Multi-Billion-Gate SoCs With Specification Automation


Connectivity checking is a popular formal verification application. Formal tools can automatically generate assertions using a specification table as input and prove them exhaustively. Simulation-based verification, on the other hand, requires significantly more effort while providing a fraction of the coverage. However, chip complexity is rapidly increasing. ASICs and FPGAs for heterogeneous c... » read more

Synthesizing Hardware From Software


The ability to automatically generate optimized hardware from software was one of the primary tenets of system-level design automation that was never fully achieved. The question now is whether that will ever happen, and whether it is just a matter of having the right technology or motivation to make it possible. While high-level synthesis (HLS) did come out of this work and has proven to be... » read more

Assuring the Integrity of RISC-V Cores and SoCs


The open RISC-V processor architecture is shaking up the intellectual property (IP) and system-on-chip (SoC) worlds. There is great interest and much industry activity underway. However, successful RISC-V core providers will have to verify all aspects of integrity for their designs: functional correctness, safety, security, and trust. SOC developers evaluating potential RISC-V need to check tha... » read more

Are Digital Twins Something For EDA To Pursue?


‘Digital Twins’ are one of the new, fashionable key concepts for system developers, but do they fit with EDA? How many different types of engines do these twins run on – abstract simulation, signal-based RTL simulation, emulation, prototyping, actual silicon? What should the use models be called for digital twinning – like reproduction of bugs from silicon in emulation? Or optimizing th... » read more

AI/ML’s Role In ADAS


Self-driving cars are headed this way, but not for a while. And that’s not a bad thing. As I discuss in my article, “Where Should Auto Sensor Data Be Processed?” there is still much to be worked out just on the technology side, such as how and where to process the significant amount of data coming into the vehicle from the outside world. [caption id="attachment_24152605" align="al... » read more

Partitioning Drives Architectural Considerations


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss partitioning with Raymond Nijssen, vice president of system engineering at Achronix; Andy Ladd, CEO at Baum; Dave Kelf, chief marketing officer at Breker; Rod Metcalfe, product management group director in the Digital & Signoff Group at Cadence; Mark Olen, product marketing group manager at Mentor, a Siemens Business; Tom Anderson, technical mar... » read more

How To Automate Functional Safety


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss functional safety thinking, techniques and approaches to automation with Mike Stellfox, Fellow at Cadence; Bryan Ramirez, strategic marketing manager at Mentor, a Siemens Business; Jörg Grosse, product manager for functional safety at OneSpin Solutions; and Marc Serughetti, senior director of product marketing for automotive verification solutions ... » read more

Debugging Complex SoCs


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss the debugging of complex SoCs with Randy Fish, vice president of strategic accounts and partnerships for UltraSoC; Larry Melling, product management director for Cadence; Mark Olen, senior product marketing manager for Mentor, a Siemens Business; and Dominik Strasser, vice president of engineering for OneSpin Solutions. What follows are excerpts of ... » read more

Complete Formal Verification of RISC V Processor IPs for Trojan-Free Trusted ICs


RISC-V processor IPs are increasingly being integrated into system-on-chip designs for a variety of applications. However, there is still a lack of dedicated functional verification solutions supporting high-integrity, trusted integrated circuits. This paper examines an efficient, novel, formal-based RISC-V processor verification methodology. The RISC-V ISA is formalized in a set of Operational... » read more

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