Automating System Design


Change is underway in the chip design world, creating opportunities and challenges that reach far beyond questions about whether Moore’s Law is slowing or stopping. Never before in the history of semiconductors has design been so complex and sophisticated, and never has it touched so many lives in so many interesting ways. This is all happening as a result of the chip’s enabling role in ... » read more

Rightsizing Challenges Grow


Rightsizing chip architectures is getting much more complicated. There are more options to choose from, more potential bottlenecks, and many more choices about what process to use at what process node and for which markets and price points. Rightsizing is a way of targeting chips to specific application needs, supplying sufficient performance while minimizing power and cost. It has been a to... » read more

The Next Big Challenge


In his keynote speech at the Synopsys User Group last month, company chairman and co-CEO Aart de Geus defined IoT as the Internet of Threats. As interviews across the semiconductor industry have revealed over the past 12 months, his comment was very much on target. As more things are connected—and that includes everything from watches to toasters to cars to buildings within a city—securi... » read more

White-Box Crypto Gains Traction


Ask any cryptography expert which is better, hardware- or software-based cryptography, and they'll almost always choose the hardware. But as the IoE begins to take root in cost-sensitive markets with tight market windows, that won't always be an option. Plan B is software cryptography, which historically has been used at the application level in the form of anti-virus, anti-spyware, and soft... » read more

Coherency, Cache And Configurability


Coherency is gaining traction across a wide spectrum of applications as systems vendors begin leveraging heterogeneous computing to improve performance, minimize power, and simplify software development. Coherency is not a new concept, but making it easier to apply has always been a challenge. This is why it has largely been relegated to CPUs with identical processor cores. But the approach ... » read more

Are Simulation’s Days Numbered?


In the latest EDAC report, the value of IP surpassed the value of CAE tools for the first time. Verification tools are an important part of establishing confidence in IP blocks and simulation has been the mainstay of that IP verification strategy. But simulation is under increasing pressure, particularly for full-chip and SoC verification, because it has failed to scale. While it still remains ... » read more

What’s Next for System-Level Power Modeling?


Availability of models and libraries has long been one of the biggest barriers to the adoption of new EDA tools and methodologies, whether due to the investment needed to create these models and libraries or because of the “at-risk” nature of developing complex models in proprietary formats. With the approval of UPF3.0 (IEEE 1801-2015) this past December, we now have an industry standar... » read more

How Many Cores? (Part 1)


The optimal number of processor cores in chip designs is becoming less obvious, in part due to new design and architectural options that make it harder to draw clear comparisons, and in part because just throwing more cores at a problem does not guarantee better performance. This is hardly a new problem, but it does have a sizable list of new permutations and variables—right-sized heteroge... » read more

The Price Of Fear


Fear sells, and judging from the attendance numbers and the messages coming out of this week's RSA Conference, it's selling quite well. Increasing connectedness comes at a significant price, and apparently lots of people are willing to pay that price. Security has become a huge and growing business. Attendance is one indicator. There were an estimated 40,000 attendees at this year's conferen... » read more

Battle Looms Over Mobile Payments


The lines are drawn. The sides are sizing each other up. Apple is on one side with secure element, and Google and Microsoft are on the other side with host card emulation. Both are mobile payment systems for smartphones that rely on near-field communication technology. Apple fired the first shot with SE, and Google soon replied with HCE. And now both sides are ramping up after months of dela... » read more

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