How To Compare Chips


Traditional metrics for semiconductors are becoming much less meaningful in the most advanced designs. The number of transistors packed into a square centimeter only matters if they can be utilized, and performance per watt is irrelevant if sufficient power cannot be delivered to all of the transistors. The consensus across the chip industry is that the cost per transistor is rising at each ... » read more

Using AI To Speed Up Edge Computing


AI is being designed into a growing number of chips and systems at the edge, where it is being used to speed up the processing of massive amounts of data, and to reduce power by partitioning and prioritization. That, in turn, allows systems to act upon that data more rapidly. Processing data at the edge rather than in the cloud provides a number of well-documented benefits. Because the physi... » read more

eFPGAs Bring A 10X Advantage In Power And Cost


eFPGA LUTs will out-ship FPGA LUTs at some point in the near future because of the advantages of reconfigurable logic being built into the chip: cost reduction, lower power, and improved performance. Many systems use FPGAs because they are more efficient than processors for parallel processing and can be programmed with application specific co-processors or accelerators typically found in da... » read more

Risks Rise As Robotic Surgery Goes Mainstream


As robotic-assisted surgery moves into the mainstream, so do concerns about security breaches, latency, and system performance. In the operating room, every second is critical, and technology failures or delays can be life-threatening. Robotic-assisted surgery (RAS) has around for a couple decades, but it is becoming more prevalent and significantly more complex. The technology often include... » read more

Why Hardware-Dependent Software Is So Critical


Hardware and software are two sides of the same coin, but they often live in different worlds. In the past, hardware and software rarely were designed together, and many companies and products failed because the total solution was unable to deliver. The big question is whether the industry has learned anything since then. At the very least, there is widespread recognition that hardware-depen... » read more

Improving PPA With AI


AI/ML/DL is starting to show up in EDA tools for a variety of steps in the semiconductor design flow, many of them aimed at improving performance, reducing power, and speeding time to market by catching errors that humans might overlook. It's unlikely that complex SoCs, or heterogeneous integration in advanced packages, ever will be perfect at first silicon. Still, the number of common error... » read more

Optimizing NoC-Based Designs


Semiconductor development is currently in a phase of rapid evolution driven by the combination of new technologies and methodologies. The technique of combining multiple functions into systems-on-chips (SoCs) is continuing to grow in complexity. Rapid advancement in new technologies for market segments like data centers, robotics, ADAS and artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) are re... » read more

Planning EDA’s Next Steps


Anirudh Devgan, Cadence's new CEO, and the recipient of the Phil Kaufman Award in December, sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to talk about what's next in EDA, the underlying technology and business challenges and changes, and new markets that are unfolding for floor-planning, verification, CFD, and advanced packaging. SE: Where does EDA need to improve? Devgan: We have made it much... » read more

Improving PPA In Complex Designs With AI


The goal of chip design always has been to optimize power, performance, and area (PPA), but results can vary greatly even with the best tools and highly experienced engineering teams. Optimizing PPA involves a growing number of tradeoffs that can vary by application, by availability of IP and other components, as well as the familiarity of engineers with different tools and methodologies. Fo... » read more

Meeting Processor Performance And Safety Requirements For New ADAS & Autonomous Vehicle Systems


By Fergus Casey and Srini Krishnaswami Innovation in today’s automotive industry is accelerating as companies race to be the market leader in safety and autonomous vehicles. With vehicle control moving from humans to the vehicles’ active safety systems, more sensors – cameras, radar, lidar, etc. – are being added to automotive systems. More sensors require more computational performa... » read more

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