Clocks Getting Skewed Up


At a logical level, synchronous designs are very simple and the clock just happens. But the clocking network is possibly the most complex in a chip, and it's fraught with the most problems at the physical level. To some, the clock is the AC power supply of the chip. To others, it is an analog network almost beyond analysis. Ironically, there are no languages to describe clocking, few tools t... » read more

Blog Review: March 30


Ansys' Shawn Carpenter takes a look at the continuing impact of potential interference with aircraft's radar altimeters on the roll out of the 5G C-band and the testing that will be needed to enable 5G C-band service towers to begin operating near airports by July. Siemens' Harry Foster points to an increase in the number of engineers working on automotive ASIC projects and the growing compl... » read more

Improving Memory Efficiency And Performance


This is the second of two parts on CXL vs. OMI. Part one can be found here. Memory pooling and sharing are gaining traction as ways of optimizing existing resources to handle increasing data volumes. Using these approaches, memory can be accessed by a number of different machines or processing elements on an as-needed basis. Two protocols, CXL and OMI, are being leveraged to simplify thes... » read more

Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing


Automotive Suzuki will collaborate with SkyDrive on flying cars. SkyDrive is working on an air taxi service that it wants to launch at the 2025 World Exposition in Osaka, Japan. Recalls: The car company Tesla is recalling 947 vehicles in the United States because rearview image lags and does not display immediately when the car is put into reverse, said the National Highway Traffic Safety A... » read more

Incremental Design Breakdown


For the past two decades, most designs have been incremental in nature. They heavily leveraged IP used in previous designs, and that IP often was developed by third parties. But there are growing problems with that methodology, especially at advanced nodes where back-end issues and the impact of 'shift left' are reducing the savings from reuse. The value of IP reuse has been well established... » read more

Overcoming The Growing Challenge Of Dynamic IR-Drop


IR-drop has always been somewhat of an issue in chip design; voltage decreases as current travels along any path with any resistance. Ohm’s Law is likely the first thing that every electrical engineer learns. But the challenges related to IR-drop (sometimes called voltage drop) have increased considerably in recent years, especially the dynamic IR-drop in the power/ground grid as circuits swi... » read more

How To Justify A Data Center


The breadth of cloud capabilities and improvements in cost and licensing structures is prompting chipmakers to consider offloading at least some of their design work into the cloud. Cloud is a viable business today for semiconductor design. Over the past decade, the interest in moving to cloud computing has grown from an idea that was fun to talk about — but which no one was serious about ... » read more

Blog Review: March 23


Arm's Ilias Vougioukas presents new ways to improve on virtual to physical memory translation without breaking any of the pre-existing hardware or software. Siemens' Scot Morrison considers the current regulatory landscape for security of medical devices, including how device manufactures need to proactively implement a plan to find, assess, and respond to potential vulnerabilities. Synop... » read more

CXL and OMI: Competing or Complementary?


System designers are looking at any ideas they can find to increase memory bandwidth and capacity, focusing on everything from improvements in memory to new types of memory. But higher-level architectural changes can help to fulfill both needs, even as memory types are abstracted away from CPUs. Two new protocols are helping to make this possible, CXL and OMI. But there is a looming question... » read more

System Innovation For Aerospace, Defense And Government


Tools for developer and user challenges Performance in a small package — low size, weight and power (SWaP) Long-life and upgradability with high-reliability, security, and safety Reliability in a range of operating environments, from ground to space End-to-end support: from the IoT network edge to the datacenter Process massively parallel sensor data with low latency S... » read more

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