Blog Review: July 17


Cadence's Xin Mu explains the PCIe ECN Unordered IO (UIO) feature in the PCIe 6.1 specification, which defines a new wire semantic and related capabilities to enable multiple-path fabric support and helps avoid unnecessary traffic for better bandwidth and latency. Synopsys' Dana Neustadter, Gary Ruggles, and Richard Solomon highlight the latest updates in the CXL 3.1 standard, including new ... » read more

Managing kW Power Budgets


Experts at the Table: Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss increasing power demands and how to address it with Hans Yeager, senior principal engineer, architecture, at Tenstorrent; Joe Davis, senior director for Calibre interfaces and EM/IR product management at Siemens EDA; Mo Faisal, CEO of Movellus; Trey Roessig, CTO and senior vice president of engineering at Empower Semiconductor.... » read more

Easing EV Range Anxiety Through Faster Charging


The automotive industry is developing new ways to boost the range of electric vehicles and the speed at which they are charged, overcoming buyer hesitation that has limited the total percentage of EVs to 18% of vehicles being sold.[1] Work is underway to improve how batteries are engineered and manufactured, and how they are managed while they are in use or being charged. This extends well b... » read more

Blog Review: July 10


Cadence's Paul Graykowski suggests using real number modeling to streamline digital mixed-signal verification using logic simulators and hardware emulators. Siemens' John McMillan and Microsoft's Amit Kumar introduce the basics of 3D-IC, describe the flow and data management challenges, look at the evolution of TSMC 3DBlox 1.0 and 2.0, and detail a physical verification and reliability analy... » read more

Security Focus Widens To HW, SW, Ecosystems


Hardware security strategies are pushing much further left in the chip design flow as the number of vulnerabilities in complex designs and connected devices continues to grow, taking into account potential vulnerabilities in both hardware and software, as well as the integrity of an extended global supply chain. These approaches leverage the speed of fixing problems in software, and the effe... » read more

Thermal Challenges Multiply In Automotive, Embedded Devices


Embedding chips into stacked-die assemblies is creating thermal dissipation challenges that can reduce the reliability and lifespan of these devices, a growing problem as chipmakers begin cramming chiplets into advanced packages with thinner substrates between them. In the past, nearly all of these complex designs were used in tightly controlled environments, such as a large data center, whe... » read more

Securing Data In Heterogeneous Designs


Data security is becoming a bigger concern as chips are disaggregated into chiplets and various third-party IP blocks. There is no single solution that works for all designs, and no single tool or methodology that addresses everything in any design. Data is being transmitted across time zones, political borders, and even across multiple designs. Laws and the need to comply with standards may... » read more

Verification Tools Straining To Keep Up


Verification engineers are the unsung heroes of the semiconductor industry, but they are at a breaking point and desperately in need of modern tools and flows to deal with the rapidly increasing pressures. Verification is no longer just about ensuring that functionality is faithfully represented in an implementation. That alone is an insolvable task, but verification has taken on many new re... » read more

Digital Twins Gaining Traction In Complex Designs


The integration of heterogeneous chiplets into an advanced package, coupled with the increasing digitalization of multiple industry segments, is pushing digital twins to the forefront of design. The challenge in these complex assemblies is figuring out the potential tradeoffs between different chiplets, different assembly approaches, and to be able to do it quickly enough to still hit market... » read more

Design Flow Challenged By 3D-IC Process, Thermal Variation


3D-ICs are proving a challenge even for designers accustomed to dealing with power and performance tradeoffs, but they are considered an inevitable migration path for leading-edge designs due to the compute demands of AI and the continual shrinking of digital logic. 3D-ICs are widely viewed as the way to continue scaling beyond the limits of planar SoCs, and a way to add more heterogeneous d... » read more

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