Scare Of The Month: Whitebox Cryptography


A debate has been raging for some time about whether hardware is more secure than software. This story should provide plenty of fuel for debate. A few years ago, something called White Box Cryptography (WBC) was developed. This is a rather novel approach that attempts to implement cryptography algorithms in software, rather than hardware. The idea is to keep the cryptographic assets secure a... » read more

Hardware Models For Software


Shift left, while a relatively new term, has become important in all parts of the SoC design flow, but its impacts are wide ranging and many still ill defined. It basically means that tasks have to be started earlier than in the past because more accuracy is required from tasks that are further down in the flow in order to make better predictions. It also implies that more steps are performed c... » read more

Software Is Eating the World


In this blog I have been discussing the increasing impact of software on many aspects of our lives. In the past we mostly interacted with a software-driven device when we sat in front of a desktop computer. We now carry a device with us that is as powerful as a computer. Our cars track our moves and try to pre-empt an accident by warning us about rapidly approaching obstacles, or prevent our ti... » read more

Software is Eating the World


The statement "software is eating the world" was coined by internet pioneer Marc Andreessen in 2011. Over the last decade, the role of electronics in our daily life has changed dramatically. To read more, click here. » read more

Stop Getting Burned By Power Consumption Surprises


Very rarely these days do we get silicon back and find that we have missed our timing or test constraints by a significant margin. We have robust EDA tools, libraries and design methodologies in place to ensure that we can cleanly signoff against these constraints. However, we do continue to see too many unfortunate “surprises” in silicon related power (energy) consumption and thermal issue... » read more

The Great IoE Race Begins


Nobody knows how many tens of billions of semiconductors will be used in the IoE, but it's a sure bet it won't be a few chips replicated billions of times. Most IoE devices will need to be customized for specific applications. Many will need to be highly reliable for many years. And all of them will need to be secure and power-efficient. Yet they also will need to connect to heterogeneous ne... » read more

Drive, Fix, Park


Autonomous cars are coming. So are cars that can fix themselves. And this is just the beginning. The idea of a connected car is all about making data available, both within the car and with the external world. Car manufacturers will be able to improve automobile quality by getting real-time data from individual vehicles and providing corrective updates when problems are identified. In additi... » read more

HW Vs. SW: Who’s Leading Whom?


In the past, technologies were developed in the software world that have languished until they were taken up by the hardware community. Then they were refined and polished and became fully integrated into the hardware development and verification flow. Examples are lint and formal. That was followed by attempts to migrate methodologies, such as object-oriented programming, which is the basis fo... » read more

Hybrid Emulation Gets More Hybrid


Rising chip complexity is creating a booming emulation business, as chipmakers working at advanced nodes turn to bigger iron to get chips out the door on time. What started as a "shift lift"—doing more things earlier in the design cycle—is evolving into a more complex mix of hardware-accelerated verification for both hardware and software. There are even some new forays into power explor... » read more

Technology Reboot Required


The International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS) has produced reports outlining the major obstacles the electronics industry faces for a long time now. It attempts to project, with a 15-year horizon, the problems that need to be solved in order to take advantage of the complete design and manufacturing ecosystem. From this, early research efforts can be started. This enabled the E... » read more

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