Intelligent System Design


Electronics technology is proliferating to new, creative applications and appearing in our everyday lives. To compete, system companies are increasingly designing their own semiconductor chips, and semiconductor companies are delivering software stacks, to enable substantial differentiation of their products. This trend started in mobile devices and is now moving into cloud computing, automotiv... » read more

Speeding Up Process Optimization With Virtual Processing


Advanced CMOS scaling and new memory technologies have introduced increasingly complex structures into the device manufacturing process. For example, the increase in NAND memory layers has achieved greater vertical NAND scaling and higher memory density, but has led to challenges in high aspect ratio etch patterning and foot print scaling issues. Unique integration and patterning schemes have b... » read more

Speeding Up Verification Using SystemC


Brett Cline, senior vice president at OneSpin Solutions, explains how adding formal verification into the high-level synthesis flow can reduce the time spent in optimization and debug by about two-thirds, why this needs to be done well ahead of RTL, starting with issues such as initialization, memory out of bounds and other issues that are difficult to find in simulation. » read more

Why Pinpoint Accuracy Is Important When Monitoring Conditions On Chip


A Q&A with Moortec CTO Oliver King. Why is there an increasing requirement for monitoring on chip? Since the beginning of the semiconductor industry, we have relied on a doubling of transistor count per unit area every 18 months as a way to increase performance and functionality of devices. Since 28nm, this has broken. As such, designers now need to find new ways to continue increasing... » read more

Reality Check: A Guide To Understanding Optimized Processor Cores


The performance of the processor core in an SoC is often a key product differentiator. It's not just about performance though - power and cost are equally important considerations. In today's markets, SoC developers have to hit aggressive power, performance and area goals to remain competitive. This white paper discusses the many interacting parameters that determine the optimum implementation ... » read more

FinFET And Multi-Patterning Aware Place And Route Implementation


The use of finFETs and multi-patterning has a huge impact on the entire physical implementation flow. This paper outlines the new challenges in placement, routing, optimization, and physical verification and describes how the Olympus-SoC place and route system handles them. To view this white paper, click here. » read more

Flexibility Improves Memory Interface Bandwidth


In today’s SoCs, memory is the heart or at least one of the main elements of the design. As such, designing them carefully is paramount to achieving the best bandwidth, performance and power. Performance is very important to be able to access the memory and to trade and store information from different IPs with shared memories or local memories. From the power perspective, every access to... » read more

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