Shortening Network-on-Chip Development Schedules Using Physical Awareness

By Frank Schirrmeister - 05 Jan, 2023 - Comments: 0

Taking physical design into account as early as possible has been a consideration of chip development teams for quite some time. Still, in interactions with customers and partners, 2022 marked a sharp uptick in concerns about whether a design that may be functionally correct can also be implemented using physical implementation flows. Given the intricacies and complexity of network-on-chip (NoC... » read more

Automatic Layout Generator Targeting Region-based Layouts for Advanced FinFET-Based Full-Custom Circuits (UT Austin/NVIDIA)

By Technical Paper Link - 15 Dec, 2022 - Comments: 0

A technical paper titled "AutoCRAFT: Layout Automation for Custom Circuits in Advanced FinFET Technologies" was published by researchers at UT Austin and NVIDIA. "This paper presents AutoCRAFT, an automatic layout generator targeting region-based layouts for advanced FinFET-based full-custom circuits. AutoCRAFT uses specialized place-and-route (P&R) algorithms to handle various design cons... » read more

ECO Should Not Stand For Extended Challenge Order

By Manoj Chacko - 25 Aug, 2022 - Comments: 0

There’s an old saying that the first 90% of a task takes 90% of the schedule, and the remaining 10% takes the other 90% of the time. In chip development, design-signoff closure has become one such task. Ideally, when the design has been placed and routed (physical implementation), final analysis of timing and other metrics is performed and an engineering change order (ECO) file is issued to t... » read more

Cutting Clock Costs On The Bleeding Edge Of Process Nodes

By Aakash Jani - 01 Aug, 2022 - Comments: 0

In a recent study done by McKinsey and IDC, we see that physical design and verification costs are increasing exponentially with shrinking transistor sizes. As figure 1 shows, physical design (PD) and pre-silicon verification costs are doubling each process leap. As companies leap from node to leading node, a natural question arises. Why is it becoming harder and more expensive to tapeout a chi... » read more

Secure Physical Design Roadmap Enabling End-To-End Trustworthy IC Design Flow

By Technical Paper Link - 21 Jul, 2022 - Comments: 0

The FICS Research Institute (University of Florida) has published a new research paper titled "Secure Physical Design." This is the first and most comprehensive research work done in this area that requires significant attention from academia, industry, and government for ensuring trust in electronic design automation flow," said lead author Sukanta Dey. Abstract "An integrated circuit is s... » read more

Optimizing For Energy In Physical Design

By Pierre-Alexandre Bou-Ach - 10 Sep, 2020 - Comments: 0

Energy is a precious resource, which should not be wasted. Energy drives economies and sustains societies. Predictions show that the energy of electronics may soon consume 20% to 33% of the global energy supply, as it is highlighted in this blog post about "Design and Manufacturing in 2030" from Greg Yeric, fellow at Arm. Energy efficiency is such an important global issue that it is ... » read more

Place And Route Made Easier And Faster

By Mentor, a Siemens Business - 12 Sep, 2019 - Comments: 0

By Allan Crone A predictable trend in IC design is the ever-increasing size and complexity of designs while keeping the time allocated for the projects the same or shorter. Along with the tape-out pressure, organizations need to find cost savings everywhere possible. Lowering the overall cost of ownership of EDA tools is a viable way to manage the design budget. Consequently, design teams ar... » read more

Can Machine Learning Chips Help Develop Better Tools With Machine Learning?

By Vinay Patwardhan - 18 Jun, 2018 - Comments: 0

As we continue to be bombarded with AI- and machine learning-themed presentations at industry conferences, an ex-colleague told me that he is sick of seeing an outline of the human head with a processor in place of the brain. If you are a chip architect trying to build one of these data-centric architecture chips for machine learning or AI (as opposed to the compute-centric chips, which you pro... » read more

I Say ‘High’ [Performance], You Say ‘Low’ [Power]

By Vinay Patwardhan - 10 Aug, 2017 - Comments: 0

“…You say ‘why’, and I say ‘I don’t know…’” Actually, I do know. Everybody loves a high-performance product. Even just hearing that a product is high-performance sets higher expectations than if the product is simply described as “fast” or “powerful.” When it comes to SoC design, “high-performance” refers to a set of designs that run at very high clock freque... » read more

The Perfect (Silicon) Marriage… Yes, It Exists

By Rajesh Ramanujam - 27 Jul, 2017 - Comments: 0

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

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Knowledge Centers
Entities, people and technologies explored

Shift Left Is The Tip Of The Iceberg

A transformative change is underway for semiconductor design and EDA. New languages, models, and abstractions will need to be created.

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Partitioning In The Chiplet Era

Understanding how chiplets interact under different workloads is critical to ensuring signal integrity and optimal performance in heterogeneous designs.

by Ann Mutschler

3.5D: The Great Compromise

Pros and cons of a middle-ground chiplet assembly that combines 2.5D and 3D-IC.

by Ed Sperling

AI’s Role In Chip Design Widens, Drawing In New Startups

Focus is on letting engineers do much more with the same or fewer resources — and less drudgery.

by Karen Heyman

Key Technologies To Extend EUV To 14 Angstroms

Alongside high-NA EUV will be better-performing photoresists, reduced roughness using passivation and etch, and lateral etching to reduce tip-to-tip dimensions.

by Laura Peters

What Comes After HBM For Chiplets

The standard for high-bandwidth memory limits design freedom at many levels, but that is required for interoperability. What freedoms can be taken from other functions to make chiplets possible?

by Brian Bailey

Memory Fundamentals For Engineers

eBook: Nearly everything you need to know about memory, including detailed explanations of the different types of memory; how and where these are used today; what's changing, which memories are successful and which ones might be in the future; and the limitations of each memory type.

by The SE Staff

Why Small Fab And Assembly Houses Are Thriving

Megafabs churning out the most advanced processors are not the only game in town.

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tag: physical design