Fundamental Shifts In Chip Business


Shifting business models, acquisitions, minority investments and increasing uncertainty are creating fundamental shifts in the semiconductor industry that could redefine who is successful in which markets for years to come. The announcement today that [getentity id="22671" e_name="Rambus"] is developing memory controller chips, expanding its business beyond just creating IP for the memory an... » read more

How Much Security Is Enough?


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss the current state of [getkc id="223" kc_name="security"] and what must be done in the future, with Denis Noël, head of cyber security solutions at [getentity id="22499" e_name="NXP"]; Serge Leef, vice president of new ventures at [getentity id="22017" e_name="Mentor Graphics"]; Andreas Kuehlman, senior vice president and general manager of the soft... » read more

Thermal Issues Getting Worse


Making sure that smartphone you’re holding doesn’t burn your face when you make a call requires a tremendous amount of engineering effort at all levels of the design - the case, the chips, the packaging. The developers of the IP subsystems in that smartphone must adhere to very strict power and energy thresholds so the OEM putting it all together can stick to some semblance of a product des... » read more

2.5D Creeps Into SoC Designs


A decade ago top chipmakers predicted that the next frontier for SoC architectures would be the z axis, adding a third dimension to improve throughput and performance, reduce congestion around memories, and reduce the amount of energy needed to drive signals. The obvious market for this was applications processors for mobile devices, and the first companies to jump on the stacked die bandwag... » read more

The Memory And Storage Hierarchy


The memory and storage hierarchy is a useful way of thinking about computer systems, and the dizzying array of memory options available to the system designer. Many different parameters characterize the memory solution. Among them are latency (how long the CPU needs to wait before the first data is available) and bandwidth (how fast additional data can be “streamed” after the first data poi... » read more

Blog Review: Aug. 12


SIM cards are protected by AES-128, which is supposed to be virtually unbeatable by a brute-force attack. But there's still a weakness: Rambus' Aharon Etengoff reports on how a researcher at Jiao Tong University exploited side-channel attack techniques to crack the encryption codes protecting 3G and 4G SIM cards. After recent reports on compromised car security, auto makers are likely search... » read more

Cryptography For ULP Devices


Soon virtually everything and everyone will be connected to the IoE in one fashion or another, and much of it will be wireless. To make it all work, these wireless, and low-power devices will need a new paradigm for handling cryptography. Ultra-low power devices have an interesting, and challenging set of metrics. There are, in general, two approaches that can work, with a variety of sub-sce... » read more

Blog Review: Aug. 5


Fresh from the July 2015 Type-C InterOp Event, where USB engineers wheel a prototype on a cart from hotel room to hotel room, testing interoperability, Synopsys' Morten Christiansen says Type-C has arrived. Mentor's Colin Walls discusses the reasons to tackle embedded software development with a bottom-up approach. In their latest video, Cadence's Kishore Kasamsetty discusses why choose L... » read more

Blog Review: July 29


NASA estimates they could reduce the cost of colonizing the moon to $10 billion, with mining fuel from the lunar surface potentially making the satellite a gas station on the way to Mars or beyond. This week's top five articles from Ansys' Bill Vandermark are mostly out of this world, but there's a down-to-earth aspect as airless tires roll closer to inclusion in consumer vehicles. How will ... » read more

The Week In Review: Design/IoT


Numbers ARM's financial results reported revenue in Q2 2015 of $357.1 million, up 15% versus Q2 2014. Half-year revenue in 2015 amounted to $705.2 million, up 15% on H1 2014. ARM's license revenues in Q2 2015 increased by 3% year-on-year to $151.0 million, representing 42% of revenue, while its royalty revenues in Q2 2015 were up 30% on Q2 2014 at $175.9 million, representing 49% of revenue.... » read more

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