Floor-Planning Evolves Into The Chiplet Era


3D-ICs and heterogeneous chiplets will require significant changes in physical layout tools, where the placement of chiplets and routing of signals can have a big impact on overall system performance and reliability. EDA vendors are well aware of the issues and working on solutions. Top on the list of challenges for 3D-ICs is thermal dissipation. Logic typically generates the most heat, and ... » read more

Enhancing RTL Design Efficiency: The Power And Benefits Of Integrated Development Environments


In today's rapidly evolving semiconductor design landscape, efficiency and productivity are integral to success. It is here that Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) are making a significant impact. These software suites are much more than programming environments where designers input text or code. They represent a comprehensive ecosystem of tools, utilities, and functionalities, all des... » read more

What’s Next In System-Level Design?


Experts At The Table: EDA has undergone numerous workflow changes over time. Different skill sets have come into play over the years, and at times this changed the definition of what it means to design at the system level. Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss what this means for designers today, and what the impact will be in the future, with Michal Siwinski, chief marketing officer at... » read more

Toward Software-Defined Vehicles


Speed is everything when it comes to designing automotive electronics, but not in the usual way. In the past, product cycles often lasted five to seven years, from initial design to implementation inside of vehicles. That no longer works as vehicles adopt more electronic features to replace mechanical ones, and as competition heats up over the latest features and nearly instantaneous over-the-a... » read more

Unifying Storage Diversity: Leveraging PCIe IP for Multi-Device, Multi Form Factor Designs


In the fast-paced world of data storage, designers are racing to keep up with ever-evolving interface standards and form factors. This whitepaper explores the impact of these industry shifts, focusing on the integration of PCIe interfaces within the context of varying storage device form factors like the Enterprise and Datacenter Standard Form Factor (EDSFF). PCIe designs need to be flexible in... » read more

Legacy Process Nodes Going Strong


While all eyes tend to focus on the leading-edge silicon nodes, many mature nodes continue to enjoy robust manufacturing demand. Successive nodes stopped reducing die cost at around the 20nm node. “In the finFET era of processes, esoteric process requirements necessary to move technology forward with each generation have added significant cost and complexity,” explained Andrew Appleby, p... » read more

Precision Patterning Options Emerge For Advanced Packaging


The chip industry is ratcheting up investments in advanced packaging as it strives to keep pace with demands for increased functionality and higher performance, including novel patterning technologies that can reduce costs and speed time to market. Success in advanced packages is partly dependent on effectively managing the interconnectivity between the chips, which requires increasingly pre... » read more

Metrology Analysis Tool For Photolithography Process Characterization At Advanced Nodes


Continued scaling of integrated circuits to smaller dimensions is still a viable way to increase compute power, achieve higher memory cell density, or reduce power consumption. These days, chip makers are using single-digit nanometer figures or even Angstrom to label their manufacturing technology nodes, which are associated with the size of features patterned during the lithography process. ... » read more

224Gbps PHY For The Next Generation Of High Performance Computing


Large language models (LLMs) are experiencing an explosive growth in parameter count. Training these ever-larger models requires multiple accelerators to work together, and the bandwidth between these accelerators directly limits the size of trainable LLMs in High Performance Computing (HPC) environments. The correlation between the LLM size and data rates of interconnect technology herald a... » read more

IC Power Optimization Required, But More Difficult To Achieve


Power optimization is playing an increasingly vital role in chip and chip and system designs, but it's also becoming much harder to achieve as transistor density and system complexity continue to grow. This is especially evident with advanced packages, chiplets, and high-performance chips, all of which are becoming more common in complex designs. Inside data centers, racks of servers are str... » read more

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