Balancing Parallel Test Productivity With Yield & Cost


Parallel test is used for nearly every device produced by fabs and OSATs, but it can reduce yield and increase the cost of test boards and operations. This is a well-understood tradeoff for ensuring consistent test accuracy across multiple sites and reducing test time. Collectively, ATEs and multi-site test boards — DUT interface boards (DIBs), probe cards, and load boards — significantl... » read more

Managing Reflections With Terminations


Have you heard recommendations to use a particular termination in particular situations for good signal integrity? Have you ever wondered how to incorporate terminations in your design? While there are typical use cases for various terminations, sometimes engineers use termination techniques based on a recommendation or assumption that may not work, or at least may not be optimal, for their par... » read more

Data Routing In Heterogeneous Chip Designs


Ensuring data gets to where it's supposed to go at exactly the right time is a growing challenge for design engineers and architects developing heterogeneous systems. There is more data moving around these chips with dozens of targets, which makes routing signals much more complicated. Ronen Perets, senior product marketing manager at Cadence Design Systems, talks about some of the new problems... » read more

Signal Integrity Basics


In this orientation to signal integrity basics, we aim to introduce several important and fundamental concepts of signal integrity for the beginner. Most explanations are provided at a high level without a lot of depth and math, and examples are provided with a focus on comparison rather than detailed numerical results. Of course, background depth, math, and numerical details are very important... » read more

Impact of Finite Interconnect Impedance Including Spatial and Domain Comparison of PDN Characterization


Abstract Over the past few decades, a lot of details have been worked out in power distribution network design, simulation and measurement. We have well-established PDN design procedures both in the frequency and time domains, we have simulation tools that can analyze the physical structure from DC to very high frequencies, including spatial variations of the behavior, and we also have fre... » read more

Managing EMI in High-Density Integration


The relentless drive for higher performance and increased functional integration has ushered in new challenges for managing electromagnetic interference (EMI) in densely packed mixed-signal environments. Integrating analog, RF, and digital circuits into a single system-on-chip (SoC) or advanced package requires solutions that reduce system size and improve performance. However, this tight in... » read more

Intel Vs. Samsung Vs. TSMC


The three leading-edge foundries — Intel, Samsung, and TSMC — have started filling in some key pieces in their roadmaps, adding aggressive delivery dates for future generations of chip technology and setting the stage for significant improvements in performance with faster delivery time for custom designs. Unlike in the past, when a single industry roadmap dictated how to get to the next... » read more

Powering Next-Generation Insightful Design


The Ansys team is gearing up for an exciting time at DAC this week, where we’ll be sharing a whole new way of visualizing physical phenomena in 3D-IC designs, powered by NVIDIA Omniverse, a platform for developing OpenUSD and RTX-enabled 3D applications and workflows. Please attend our Exhibitor Forum session so we can show you the valuable design insights you can gain by interactively viewin... » read more

Integration Hurdles For Analog And RF In Next-Gen Packages


A rapid increase in wireless connectivity and more sensors, coupled with a shift away from monolithic SoCs toward heterogeneous integration, is driving up the amount of analog/RF content in systems and changing the dynamics within a package. Since the early 2000s, the majority of chips used at the most advanced nodes were systems-on-chip (SoCs). All features had to fit into a single planar S... » read more

Overcoming Signal Integrity Challenges Of 112G Connections


One of the big challenges with 112G SerDes (and, to a lesser extent, all SerDes) is handling signal integrity issues. In the worst case of a long-reach application, the signal starts at the transmitter on one chip, goes from the chip to the package, across a trace on a printed-circuit board (PCB), through a connector, then a cable or backplane, another connector, another PCB trace, another pack... » read more

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