The Week In Review: Design


Tools Mentor, a Siemens business, filled in the last of the hardware configurations for its Veloce Strato emulation family, creating a full upgrade path. Users can initially purchase only the hardware that they need (StratoTiL) and if later they require more capacity (StratoTi) or the ability to handle larger designs (StratoT), they can incrementally add the necessary hardware to their existin... » read more

Heterogeneous Hubbub


It’s no secret that designers today would prefer not to be restricted in their architectural choices. And who can blame them? At the same time, this sentiment has boosted interest and usage of both heterogenous architectures as well as the RISC-V ISA. To support this, companies across the design, test and verification ecosystem are ramping efforts. One such effort is the teaming of UltraSo... » 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

Blockchain: Hype, Reality, Opportunities


Blockchain buzz has reached deafening levels, and its proponents say we haven’t heard anything yet. The blockchain-enabled transformations they describe make the Internet revolution look almost trivial. Critics argue that too many people drank the blockchain Kool-Aid. Outside the cryptocurrency arena, they say that blockchain amounts to little more than some really slick slideware. The ... » read more

Reflection On 2017: Design And EDA


People love to make predictions, and most of the time they have it easy, but at Semiconductor Engineering, we ask them to look back on the predictions they make each year and to assess how close to the mark they were. We see what they missed and what surprised them. Not everyone accepts our offer to grade themselves, but most have this year. (Part one looked at the predictions associated with s... » read more

Mixing Interface Protocols


Continuous and pervasive connectivity requires devices to support multiple interface protocols, but that is creating problems at multiple levels because each protocol is based on a different set of assumptions. This is becoming significantly harder as systems become more heterogeneous and as more functions are crammed into those devices. There are more protocols that need to be supported to ... » read more

Get eFPGA With Your CPU Now


eFPGA is available now on mainstream process nodes (40, 28 and 16), in sizes from 200 LUTs to 200K LUTs and with options for DSP and RAM integration to fit almost any customer need. Flex Logix has been working for some time with multiple customers on integrating eFPGA with their CPUs: ARM, RISC-V, Tensilica and others. Bus interfaces include AXI, AHB, APB and TL. Our lead customer has workin... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Chipmakers The 2017 top-ten rankings of foundries remain the same as last year, according to TrendForce. TSMC, GlobalFoundries and United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC) rank first, second, and third, respectively, in terms of projected sales in 2017, according to TrendForce. TSMC has a dominant market share of 55.9%. In the rankings, Samsung is in fourth place, followed in order by SMIC, TowerJa... » read more

The Week In Review: Design


M&A Synopsys will acquire Black Duck Software, a provider of software for securing and managing open source software. Synopsys already has a stake in this area from its Coverity acquisition in 2014, which it has been using to analyze security practices in open source software. Founded in 2003 and headquartered in Massachusetts, Black Duck's products automate the process of identifying and ... » read more

The Week In Review: Design


M&A PLDA is divesting its Reflex CES brand. The FPGA board maker will become wholly managed by its own management and investment teams. In 2015, Reflex CES took over the hardware businesses of PLDA, including FPGA-based boards and the System-on-Module product lines. Tools Mentor uncorked a new tool for in-system test and diagnosis of automotive ICs. Tessent MissionMode provides infrast... » read more

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