Power Impact At The Physical Layer Causes Downstream Effects


Data movement is rapidly emerging as one of the top design challenges, and it is being complicated by new chip architectures and physical effects caused by increasing density at advanced nodes and in multi-chip systems. Until the introduction of the latest revs of high-bandwidth memory, as well as GDDR6, memory was considered the next big bottleneck. But other compute bottlenecks have been e... » read more

High-Speed Signaling Drill-Down


Chip interconnect standards have received a lot of attention lately, with parallel versions proliferating for chiplets and serial versions moving to higher speeds. The lowliest characteristic of these interconnect schemes is the physical signaling format. Having been static at NRZ (non-return-to-zero) for decades, change is underway. “Multiple approaches are likely to emerge,” said Brig ... » read more

Designing The Next Big Things


The edge is a humongous opportunity for the semiconductor industry. The problem, despite its name, is that it's not a single thing. It will be comprised of thousands of different chips and systems, and very few will be sold in large volumes. The edge is the culmination of decades of improvement in power and performance, coupled with the architectural creativity that has exploded since the bene... » read more

Introducing Nanosheets Into Complementary-Field Effect Transistors (CFETs)


In our November 2019 blog [1], we discussed using virtual fabrication (SEMulator3D) to benchmark different process integration options for Complementary-FET (CFET) fabrication. CFET is a CMOS architecture that was proposed by imec in 2018 [2]. This architecture contains p- and n-MOSFET structures built on top of each other, instead of having them located side-by-side. In our previous blog, we r... » read more

What’s So Important About Processor Extensibility?


While the ability to extend a processor is nothing new, market dynamics are forcing a growing percentage of the industry to consider it a necessary part of their product innovation. From small IoT functions to massive data centers and artificial intelligence, the need to create an optimized processing platform is often the only way to get more performance or lower power out of the silicon area ... » read more

Rising Packaging Complexity


Synopsys’ Rita Horner looks at the design side of advanced packaging, including how tools are chosen today, what considerations are needed for integrating IP while maintaining low latency and low power, why this is more complex in some ways than even the most advanced planar chip designs, and what’s still missing from the tool flow. » read more

Big Changes For eFPGAs


Geoff Tate, CEO of Flex Logix, talks with Semiconductor Engineering about the state of embedded FPGAs, why this is easier for some companies than others, why this is important for adding flexibility into an ASIC, and what are the main applications for this technology. » read more

The Meaning Of Verification


When I ask the question "Why do we do verification?" there are generally two types of responses. One of them sees the glass as half empty and the other as half full. It depends upon how you look at the problem and if you see verification as being a positive or negative operation. The negative answer is that we do verification to find bugs. This relies on the mechanical function of creating v... » read more

AI, Performance, Power, Safety Shine Spotlight On Last-Level Cache


Memory limitations to performance, always important in modern systems, have become an especially significant concern in automotive safety-critical applications making use of AI methods. On one hand, detecting and reporting a potential collision or other safety problem has to be very fast. Any corrective action is constrained by physics and has to be taken well in advance to avoid the problem. ... » read more

Enterprise-Class DRAM Reliability


Brett Murdock, product manager for memory interfaces at Synopsys, examines demand for DDR5 and DDR4 in both on-premise and cloud implementations, what features are available for which versions, how they affect performance and power, how ECC is implemented, and how the data moves throughout these systems. » read more

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