Blog Review: Aug. 23


Siemens' Stephen Chavez discusses best practices when it comes to thermal analysis for PCB design, including component placement and close collaboration between mechanical and electrical engineering disciplines. Synopsys' Gary Ruggles, Richard Solomon, and Varun Agrawal introduce the Compute Express Link (CXL) specification and how it could help improve latency through computational offloadi... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


Synopsys’ board of directors appointed Sassine Ghazi as president and chief executive officer effective on Jan. 1, 2024. Ghazi, who is currently the COO, will succeed Aart de Geus, co-founder, chair, and CEO of Synopsys, who will then become the executive chair of board of directors. IBM Research introduced  an energy-efficient mixed-signal analog AI chip for DNN inferencing and demonstra... » read more

Tradeoffs Between On-Premise And On-Cloud Design


Experts at the Table: Semiconductor Engineering sat down discuss how and why companies are dividing up work on-premise and in the cloud, and what to watch out for, with Philip Steinke, fellow, CAD infrastructure and physical design at AMD; Mahesh Turaga, vice president of business development for cloud at Cadence Design Systems; Richard Ho, vice president hardware engineering at Lightmatter; Cr... » read more

Blog Review: Aug. 16


Synopsys' Johannes Stahl and Tim Kogel suggest that multi-die systems require a new approach at the architecture planning phase and why chip designers can’t ignore physical effects such as layout, power, temperature, or IR-drop. Siemens' Rich Edelman argues for using the waveform window in a GUI rather than $display when debugging UVM. Cadence's Paul Scannell stresses the need for diver... » read more

Processor Tradeoffs For AI Workloads


AI is forcing fundamental shifts in chips used in data centers and in the tools used to design them, but it also is creating gaps between the speed at which that technology advances and the demands from customers. These shifts started gradually, but they have accelerated and multiplied over the past year with the rollout of ChatGPT and other large language models. There is suddenly much more... » read more

MRAM Getting More Attention At Smallest Nodes


Magneto-resistive RAM (MRAM) appears to be gaining traction at the most advanced nodes, in part because of recent improvements in the memory itself and in part because new markets require solutions for which MRAM may be uniquely qualified. There are still plenty of skeptics when it comes to MRAM, and lots of potential competitors. That has limited MRAM to a niche role over the past couple de... » read more

Fast, Accurate, Automated Via Insertion During Design Implementation Requires Foundry Rule Compliance


As the scaling of silicon technology proceeds, via resistance is becoming a dominant factor in integrated circuit (IC) yield, performance, and reliability. At advanced nodes, interconnects and via dimensions decrease, while the number of metallization layers increases. To moderate the impact of via resistance on yield and reliability and reduce electromigration (EM) and voltage drop (IR) effect... » read more

Chiplets: Deep Dive Into Designing, Manufacturing, And Testing


Chiplets are a disruptive technology. They change the way chips are designed, manufactured, tested, packaged, as well as the underlying business relationships and fundamentals. But they also open the door to vast new opportunities for existing chipmakers and startups to create highly customized components and systems for specific use cases and market segments. This LEGO-like approach sounds ... » read more

A Survey Of Machine Learning Applications In Functional Verification


Functional verification is computationally and data-intensive by nature, making it a natural target of machine learning applications. This paper provides a comprehensive and up-to-date analysis of FV problems addressable by ML. Among the various ML techniques and algorithms, several emerging ones have demonstrated outstanding potential in FV. Yet despite the promising research results, criti... » read more

Blog Review: Aug. 2


Siemens' Katie Tormala points to the need for die attach thermal testing to ensure efficient removal of heat dissipation from power electronics components to prevent premature failure or thermal runaway. Synopsys's Dermott Lynch notes that over 30% of semiconductor failures are attributed to electrostatic discharge, with damage ranging from leakages and shorts to junction and metallization b... » read more

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