Changing The IP Supplier Paradigm


Semiconductor Engineering sat down with Rich Wawrzyniak, senior market analyst for ASIC and SoC at Semico Research; John Koeter, vice president of marketing for the Solutions Group at [getentity id="22035" e_name="Synopsys"]; Mike Gianfagna, vice president of marketing for [getentity id="22242" e_name="eSilicon"]; Peter McGuinness, director of technology marketing at [getentity id="22709" e_nam... » read more

Changing The IP Supplier Paradigm


Just a few years ago, the [getkc id="43" comment="Intellectual Property"] (IP) business consisted of small blocks being sold by small companies and an almost over the wall delivery mechanism. The industry quickly realized the problems with this supply chain and the IP business went through very rapid change. At the same time, the average size of the IP blocks has increased and today, what we th... » read more

Leveraging Processor Extensibility To Build An Ultra Low-Power Embedded Subsystem


There is increasing demand for electronic devices to execute more functions while consuming less power and silicon area. To achieve this, systems instantiating multiple, heterogeneous processor cores optimized for low power and high performance are gaining popularity among design teams. In these systems, one or more deeply embedded processors execute a limited set of dedicated applications. The... » read more

SoC Integration Mistakes


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss integration challenges with Ruggero Castagnetti, distinguished engineer at LSI; Rob Aitken, an ARM fellow; Robert Lefferts, director of engineering in Synopsys’ Solutions Group; Bernard Murphy, chief technology officer at Atrenta; and Luigi Capodieci, R&D fellow at GlobalFoundries. What follows are excerpts of that roundtable discussion. S... » read more

The End Is Near


Looking back is easier than looking forward, and looking narrow is easier than looking wide. In 2013, there were several fundamental changes. Change No. 1: IP is now a lucrative market. From Synopsys’ standpoint, it’s been a lucrative market for some time. But the acquisitions made by Cadence, beginning in late 2012, coupled with the push by ARM into the micro-server market and the flail... » read more

When Is Verification Done?


Verification is becoming much more difficult at 16nm/14nm, driven by the sheer complexity of SoCs, the fact that there is much more to verify, and the impact of physical effects, which now affect what used to be exclusively the realm of functional verification. The questions these changes raise are daunting, and for many engineers rather unnerving. The whole validation, verification and debu... » read more

Week In Review: System-Level Design


Synopsys extended its FPGA prototyping board with a new version that is optimized for IP and subsystems. This is particularly interesting given the fact that Synopsys is one of the largest IP providers and currently sells subsystems based on its ARC processor IP. Among the new features are support for 4 million gates for software development and hardware-software integration, as well as synthes... » read more

Even Standard IP Isn’t Always Standard


Time to market and rising complexity are forcing the use of more third-party IP as well as increasing reuse of internally developed IP. But as more IP is added into SoCs, chipmakers are discovering some interesting things: Not all IP works together as planned, even when it’s well characterized. As with cars, performance and mileage vary greatly depending upon who’s driving—and who’s... » read more

Experts At The Table: Debug


By Ed Sperling Semiconductor Engineering sat down with Galen Blake, senior verification engineer at Altera; Warren Stapleton, senior fellow at Advanced Micro Devices; Stephen Bailey, director of solutions marketing at Mentor Graphics; Michael Sanie, senior director of verification marketing at Synopsys. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: The amount of IP is increasing and i... » read more

The Integrated IP Subsystem: A Converging SoC Solution


The consumer device market is witnessing incredible market space convergence between mobile handheld, automotive, and home electronics. IP vendors, engineers, and system design engineers face a multitude of challenges when designing and developing ICs, systems, or subsystems for the next great portable device. The next cell phone for instance, will not only be a multimedia player, but also a de... » read more

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