SRAM Scaling Issues, And What Comes Next


The inability of SRAM to scale has challenged power and performance goals forcing the design ecosystem to come up with strategies that range from hardware innovations to re-thinking design layouts. At the same time, despite the age of its initial design and its current scaling limitations, SRAM has become the workhorse memory for AI. SRAM, and its slightly younger cousin DRAM, have always co... » read more

IC Package Physical Design Best Practices


Historically IC package design has been a relatively simple task which allowed the die bumps to be fanned out on a package substrate to a floorplan geometry suitable for connecting to a printed circuit board (PCB). But today the industry is moving to disaggregation of traditional monolithic SoC functions into chiplets often interfaced with local high-speed memory to avoid silicon reticle limits... » read more

Memory’s Future Hinges On Reliability


Experts at the Table: Semiconductor Engineering sat down to talk about the impact of power and heat on off-chip memory, and what can be done to optimize performance, with Frank Ferro, group director, product management at Cadence; Steven Woo, fellow and distinguished inventor at Rambus; Jongsin Yun, memory technologist at Siemens EDA; Randy White, memory solutions program manager at Keysight; a... » read more

Blog Review: Feb. 7


Synopsys' Ian Land, Kenneth Larsen, and Rob Aitken find that a new approach will be required to ensure that higher volume 3D heterogeneous integration (3DHI) designs can function reliably and successfully in aerospace, defense, and government systems. Siemens' John Golding provides a primer on the fundamental concepts related to signal integrity, including key topics such as transmission lin... » read more

Software-Defined Vehicles Ready To Roll


Software-defined vehicles are driving a swell of activity across the automotive ecosystem, including new methodologies and technology approaches that could significantly reduce costs and shorten time to market for advanced features. The SDV approach encompasses more than a single concept. It helps to think of it more as a modeling approach that connects EVs, driver assistance technology, and... » read more

Role For ICs Expands In Humanoid Robots


Semiconductors play a crucial role in the development and functionality of humanoid robots. Humanoid robots are advanced machines designed to resemble and perform tasks similar to humans. The integration of semiconductors in humanoid robots contributes to their sensory perception, processing capabilities, and overall functionality. Robots are used in everything from security and defense, to ... » read more

Formal Verification’s Usefulness Widens


Formal verification is being deployed more often and in more places in chip designs as the number of possible interactions grows, and as those chips are used in more critical applications. In the past, much of formal verification was focused on whether a chip would function properly. But as designs become more complex and heterogeneous, and as use cases change, formal verification is being u... » read more

Why There Are Still No Commercial 3D-ICs


Building chips in three dimensions is drawing increased attention and investment, but so far there have been no announcements about commercial 3D-IC chips. There are some fundamental problems that must be overcome and new tools that need to be developed. In contrast, the semiconductor industry is becoming fairly comfortable with 2.5D integration, where individual dies are assembled on some k... » read more

EDA Back On Investors’ Radar


EDA is transforming from a staid but strategic sector into a hot investment market, fueled by strong earnings and growth, a clamoring for leading-edge and increasingly customized designs across new and existing markets, and the rollout of advanced technologies such as AI for a range of tools that will be needed to develop new architectures with much greater performance per watt. A confluence... » read more

IC Tool Vendors Eye Cloud-Native Future


The promise of scalability and efficiency is accelerating the migration of electronic design automation (EDA) to the cloud. Unlimited on-demand compute resources fundamentally change the chip design paradigm, where tools and workloads are no longer constrained by localized hardware. This is easier said than done, however. Optimizing existing tools and infrastructure, creating a new generatio... » read more

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