Improving PPA When Embedding FPGAs Into SoCs


Embedded FPGAs have been on everyone’s radar for years as a way of extending the life of chips developed at advanced nodes, but they typically have come with high performance and power overhead. That’s no longer the case, and the ability to control complex chips and keep them current with changes to algorithms and various protocols is significant step. Geoff Tate, CEO of Flex Logix, talks a... » read more

Reducing Simulation Regression Turnaround Time With Dynamic Performance Optimization


No single step in the development of semiconductor devices is more sensitive to speed than functional simulation. A modern system-on-chip (SoC) design simulates billions of cycles of operation in the process of completing the verification plan and achieving coverage goals. To validate full system functionality, many of these simulations include running code on one or more embedded processors. E... » read more

Improving Concurrent Chip Design, Manufacturing, And Test Flows


Semiconductor design, manufacturing, and test are becoming much more tightly integrated as the chip industry seeks to optimize designs using fewer engineers, setting the stage for greater efficiencies and potentially lower chip costs without just relying on economies of scale. The glue between these various processes is data, and the chip industry is working to weave together various steps t... » read more

Why Traceability Matters


More heterogeneous and increasingly dense chip designs make it much harder to stay on track with initial specifications. Paul Graykowski, senior technical marketing manager at Arteris IP, talks about matching requirements to the design, the impact of ECOs and other last-minute changes, and best practices for managing revisions. » read more

Preparing For Test Early In The Design Flow


Until very recently, semiconductor design, verification, and test were separate domains. Those domains have since begun to merge, driven by rising demand for reliability, shorter market windows, and increasingly complex chip architectures. In the past, products were designed from a functional perspective, and designers were not concerned about what the physical implementation of the product ... » read more

PPA(V): Performance-Per-Watt Optimization With Variable Operating Voltage


Performance-per-watt has emerged as one of the highest priorities in design quality, leading to a shift in technology focus and design power optimization methodologies. Variable operating voltage possess high potential in optimizing performance-per-watt results but requires a signoff accurate and efficient methodology to explore. Synopsys Fusion Design Platform, uniquely built on a singular RTL... » read more

VLSI Design Careers


If you're planning your career in the semiconductor industry, make sure you consider processor design. Now the aspiring VLSI engineers like you can implement the open-source processor RISC-V while learning from the textbooks. But why should a VLSI engineer understand the processor design? Does everyone implement the processor as an RTL designer? In this article, I will address these question... » read more

Accelerating Verification Shift Left With Intelligent Coverage Optimization


Functional verification dominates semiconductor development, consuming the largest percentage of project time and resources. Team members look at the rate of design bug discovery, consider anecdotal information on the types of bugs that escaped to silicon in previous projects, and use their best judgment based on their years of experience to determine when to tape out. Above all, they look at v... » read more

Best Practices For Deploying Cliosoft SOS On AWS


Semiconductor Integrated Circuits (ICs) are at the center of a number of modern technological innovations. To keep up with the ever-increasing pace of innovation, IC design teams require robust, scalable design management (DM) solutions to enable seamless global collaboration and increase productivity. This eBook outlines the advantages of, and best practices, for deploying Cliosoft SOS design ... » read more

Steering The Semiconductor Industry


Progress in semiconductors has been one of the most successful engineering feats, and the industry has ridden an exponential curve longer than anything else in history. It is also a highly conservative industry that has pushed away many disruptive changes in favor of small incremental changes that minimize risk. There have been significant changes over the decades, and they often required a ... » read more

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