Wireless Charging Creeps Forward


It's well known that electricity can travel long distances through the air, but expanding beyond the boundaries of a wire has never seemed a practical or reliable way to power delicate electronics. In fact, wireless power has been widely available for years. Whether this approach will be used to extend battery life isn't entirely clear. But it is attracting renewed attention as the balance b... » read more

Blog Review: Feb. 28


Mentor's Matthew Ballance explains just what the portable stimulus standard makes portable. Cadence's Dave Pursley considers why high-level synthesis is a good fit for cutting-edge machine learning designs. Synopsys' Melissa Kirschner notes that the growing number of IoT devices means new opportunities for one-time programmable NVM. Applied's Mike Rosa considers the pros and cons of 5G... » read more

Why EDA Needs To Change


Why is it taking so long for [getkc id="305" kc_name="machine learning"] to have an impact within EDA? Most of the time when I talk to the experts within the field I hear about why designs are so different from other machine learning applications, and I know that is true. Many of you reading this may not be aware that I was a developer of EDA tools for more than 35 years before I ended up writi... » read more

RISC-V Gains Its Footing


The RISC-V instruction-set architecture, which started as a UC Berkeley project to improve energy efficiency, is gaining steam across the industry. The RISC-V Foundation's member roster gives an indication who is behind this effort. Members include Google, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Rambus, Samsung, NXP, Micron, IBM, GlobalFoundries, UltraSoC, Siemens, among many others. One of the key markets for... » read more

The Week In Review: Design


Tools & IP Pro Design launched three new proFPGA Zynq UltraScale+ FPGA modules for SoC and IP prototyping. The modules combine FPGA logic with quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 and dual-core ARM Cortex-R5 processors and on-board interfaces. The modules offer a total of up to 5 extension sites with 531 standard I/Os and 16 multi-gigabit transceivers (MGTs). The board allows a maximum point-to-point ... » read more

The Week in Review: IoT


Finance Vectra raised $36 million in Series D funding led by Atlantic Bridge Capital. The Ireland Strategic Investment Fund and Nissho Electronics also participated in this funding round along with returning investors Khosla Ventures, Accel Partners, IA Ventures, AME Cloud Ventures, DAG Ventures, and Wipro Ventures, bringing Vectra’s total funding to date to $123 million. Vectra will use the... » read more

A Reliability Baseline Is Essential For Today’s Complex IC Designs


Design rule checking (DRC) represents a common platform by which we can all compare relative rule complexity. The industry expectation is that all foundries will provide complete DRC and layout vs. schematic (LVS) rule decks at all process nodes for the successful tape-out of IC designs. However, not only are DRC operations growing significantly (Figure 1), but the scope of the rules needed to ... » read more

Debugging Debug


There appears to be an unwritten law about the time spent in debug-it is a constant. It could be that all gains made by improvements in tools and methodologies are offset by increases in complexity, or that the debug process causes design teams to be more conservative. It could be that no matter how much time spent on debug, the only thing accomplished is to move bugs to places that are less... » read more

Using Data Mining Differently


The semiconductor industry generates a tremendous quantity of data, but until very recently engineers had to sort through it on their own to spot patterns, trends and aberrations. That's beginning to change as chipmakers develop their own solutions or partner with others to effectively mine this data. Adding some structure and automation around all of this data is long overdue. Data mining h... » read more

Verification Of Functional Safety (Part 2)


The automotive industry is grappling with a tradeoff between cost and safety. Safety is well understood in industries that are cost-insensitive, such as aerospace and medical, and the consumer industry has a long track record of driving down costs while increasing functionality. But can these two industries be brought together in a safe and effective manner to enable automobiles to achieve the ... » read more

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