The Good And Bad Of Auto IC Updates


Keeping automobiles updated enough to avoid problems is becoming increasingly difficult as more complex electronics are added into vehicles, and as the lifetimes of those devices are extended to a decade or more. Modern vehicles are full of electronics. In fact, the value of electronic devices used in modern vehicles is expected to double in the next 10 years, growing to $469 billion by 2030... » read more

One-On-One: Lip-Bu Tan


Lip-Bu Tan, CEO of Cadence, sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to talk about the impact of massive increases in data across a variety of industries, the growing need for computational software, and the potential implications of U.S.-China relations. What follows are excerpts of that discussion. SE: What do you see as the biggest change for the chip industry? Tan: We're in our fifth g... » read more

Power Optimization: What’s Next?


Concerns about the power consumed by semiconductors has been on the rise for the past couple of decades, but what can we expect to see coming in terms of analysis and automation from EDA companies, and is the industry ready to make the investment? Ever since Dennard scaling stopped providing automatic power gains by going to a smaller geometry, circa 2006, semiconductors have been increasing... » read more

Testing Analog Circuits Becoming More Difficult


Foundries and packaging houses are wrestling how to control heat in the testing phase, particularly as devices continue to shrink and as thermally sensitive analog circuits are added into SoCs and advanced packages to support everything from RF to AI. The overriding problem is that heat can damage chips or devices under test. That's certainly true for digital chips developed at advanced node... » read more

Merging Verification And Test


While the disciplines of functional verification and test serve different purposes, their histories were once closely intertwined. Recent safety and security monitoring requirements coupled with capabilities being embedded into devices is bringing them closer together again, but can they successfully cooperate to bring about improvements in both? Getting there may be difficult. Three phases ... » read more

What Is Silicon Lifecycle Management? A Strategic Imperative


The recent buzz about silicon lifecycle management speaks to the boom in high-stakes electronic devices. Whether it is an SoC used in a vehicle or in the datacenter, there are compelling reasons to monitor and analyze data regarding the design, realization, deployment, and field service of the device. While silicon lifecycle management is an emerging paradigm in the semiconductor industry, i... » read more

How Heterogeneous ICs Are Reshaping Design Teams


Experts at the Table: Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss the complex interactions developing between different engineering groups as designs become more heterogeneous, with Jean-Marie Brunet, senior director for the Emulation Division at Siemens EDA; Frank Schirrmeister, senior group director for solution marketing at Cadence; Maurizio Griva, R&D Manager at Reply; and Laurent Mai... » read more

Demand for IC Resilience Drives Methodology Changes


Applications that demand safety, security, and resilience are driving new ways of thinking about design, verification, and the long-term reliability of chips on a mass scale. The need is growing for chips that can process more data faster, over longer periods of time, and often within a shrinking power budget. That, in turn, is forcing changes at multiple levels, at the architecture, design,... » read more

Finally, Analyzing All Test And Manufacturing Data Automatically


Product quality and yield, operational efficiency, and time-to-market continue to be dominant drivers in the semiconductor industry. Adding to this complexity is a diverse manufacturing and test supply-chain of independent providers all continuously generating enormous amounts of different types of chip-related data in various formats. The knowledge contained within this data is critical to pro... » read more

A View Across The Siliconscape


What would it look like if you had the magical ability to look inside a chip and cast your eyes across the tumultuous activities within the silicon itself? If you could gaze into the die and see the real-time peaks and troughs of voltage supply, stressed areas with high activity and heat and areas of calm where uneven workloads create idle processor cores. A vision of the chip landscape, seasca... » read more

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