Lower Process Nodes Drive Timing Signoff Software Evolution


A dramatic rise in design complexity has led to a slew of new signoff challenges that impact the ability to predictably meet PPA targets. Smaller technology nodes and larger design sizes have caused the number of corners and modes to grow exponentially leading to much longer turnaround times for timing signoff. Moreover, larger design sizes demand huge compute resources for timing signoff. I... » read more

Electro-Thermal Signoff For Next Gen 3DICs


Multi-die designs, 2.5D and 3D, have been rising in popularity as they offer tremendously increased levels of integration, a smaller footprint, performance gains and more. While they are attractive for many applications, they also create design bottlenecks in the areas of thermal management and power delivery. For 3DICs, in addition to the complex SoC/PCB interactions seen in their 2D counterpa... » read more

The Seven Steps Of Formal Signoff


“Signoff” may be the most exciting—and frightening—word in semiconductor development. After many months, or even years of team effort, committing a design to silicon fabrication is indeed an exciting and rewarding event. But, there’s often significant anxiety involved as well – if any missed issues result in having to “turn” the chip, the increased costs and time-to-market delay... » read more

Verification At 7/5nm


Christen Decoin, senior director of business development at Synopsys, talks about what’s missing in verification, how is that affected by complex chips such as 7nm SoCs or AI chips, and why more steps need to be done concurrently. https://youtu.be/bz6KyJh67sI » read more

How Qualcomm Got Faster Signoff DRC Convergence


Qualcomm Incorporated designs and markets wireless telecommunications products and services that are the foundational technologies that others build upon, from mobile processors to embedded platforms, Bluetooth products, and cellular modems. In the fast-moving mobile phone market in which Qualcomm competes, companies who can get to market more quickly gain a strong competitive advantage, along ... » read more

MISing In Signoff


Timing signoff is critical to ensure your design will perform as expected before it is taped out. For many designs, signoff and subsequent ECOs are focused on the performance target and iterating to meet that.  Once the performance goals are met then the attention passes onto hold-time fixing and then, usually, quickly onto tapeout.  However, even after extensive signoff analysis, silicon fai... » read more

The Impact of Domain Crossing on Safety


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss problems associated with domain crossings with Alex Gnusin, design verification technologist for Aldec; Pete Hardee, director, product management for Cadence; Joe Hupcey, product manager and verification product technologist for Mentor, a Siemens Business; Sven Beyer, product manager design verification for OneSpin; and Godwin Maben, applications en... » read more

Reliability, Machine Learning And Advanced Packaging


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss reliability, resilience, machine learning and advanced packaging with Rahul Goyal, vice president in the technology and manufacturing group at Intel; Rob Aitken, R&D fellow at Arm; John Lee, vice president and general manager of the semiconductor business unit at ANSYS; and Lluis Paris, director of IP portfolio marketing at TSMC. What follows ar... » read more

So Many Waivers Hiding Issues


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss problems associated with domain crossings with Alex Gnusin, design verification technologist for Aldec; Pete Hardee, director, product management for Cadence; Joe Hupcey, product manager and verification product technologist for Mentor, a Siemens Business; Sven Beyer, product manager design verification for OneSpin; and Godwin Maben, applications en... » read more

Beyond Signoff


The future of connectivity is very promising - the new era of semiconductors will give rise to transformational products that will enable seamless connectivity with 5G, smarter devices with AI, next generation mobility with autonomous vehicles and immersive experiences with AR and VR. These cutting-edge electronics systems will require the use of advanced sub-16nm SoCs and complex packaging tec... » read more

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