3D-IC Intensifies Demand For Multi-Physics Simulation


The introduction of full 3D-ICs will require a simultaneous analysis of various physical effects under different workloads, a step-function change that will add complexity at every step of the design flow, expand and alter job responsibilities, and bring together the analog and digital design worlds in unprecedented ways. 3D-ICs will be the highest-performance advanced packaging option, in s... » read more

Blog Review: March 20


Synopsys' Kiran Vittal delves into AI chips, including the expansion of chip design beyond traditional semiconductor companies, adoption of RISC-V, and the use of formal equivalence checking to verify complex AI datapaths. Siemens' Patrick McGoff points to a survey that suggests projects deploying design for manufacturing within a PCB design flow are more likely to be completed on-time, on-q... » read more

Optimizing Energy At The System Level


Power is a ubiquitous concern, and it is impossible to optimize a system's energy consumption without considering the system as a whole. Tremendous strides have been made in the optimization of a hardware implementation, but that is no longer enough. The complete system must be optimized. There are far reaching implications to this, some of which are driving the path toward domain-specific c... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


By Adam Kovac, Karen Heyman, and Liz Allan. Europe's semiconductor footprint is growing in areas that previously had little association with chips. Silicon Box plans to build a panel-level foundry in northern Italy, funded in part by the Italian government. The deal is worth around €3.2 billion ($3.6B). In addition, imec will establish a specialized 300mm chip technology pilot line in M... » read more

Verifying Hardware Security With RTL Simulation


When consumers think about security for their electronic gadgets, financial applications probably spring first to mind. Identity theft and unauthorized access to bank and investment accounts are a constant threat. But there’s more to worry about every day. Stories of webcams and smart speakers being hacked are all over the web. Users rightfully demand that device manufacturers provide a high ... » read more

Backside Power Delivery Adds New Thermal Concerns


As the semiconductor industry gears up for backside power delivery at the 2nm node, implementation of the technology requires a re-thinking of established design practices. While some EDA tools are already qualified, designers must acquaint themselves with new issues, including making place-and-route more thermal-aware and how to manage heat dissipation with less shielding and thinner substr... » read more

The Rising Price Of Power In Chips


Power is everything when it comes to processing and storing data, and much of it isn't good. Power-related issues, particularly heat, dominate chip and system designs today, and those issues are widening and multiplying. Transistor density has reached a point where these tiny digital switches are generating more heat than can be removed through traditional means. That may sound manageable e... » read more

Photonics: The Former And Future Solution


Experts at the Table: Semiconductor Engineering sat down to talk about where photonics is in the hype cycle and its secure role in data centers, with James Pond, fellow at Ansys; Gilles Lamant, distinguished engineer at Cadence; and Mitch Heins, business development manager for photonic solutions at Synopsys. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. [L-R]: Ansys’ Pond, Cadence�... » read more

Changes And Challenges In Auto MCUs


Microcontrollers have been a key component in automotive for years, starting with single-core devices with limited on-chip memory for very basic functions, and evolving toward multi-core systems with more memory for more complex tasks. But as vehicles become increasingly automated, microcontrollers are changing significantly, and so is the perception of how to utilize them. These new devices ne... » read more

Blog Review: Mar. 13


Cadence's Geeta Arora explains the Address Translation Service in PCIe 6.0, which allows an I/O device to perform its own virtual to physical address translations without relying on the host's CPU to reduce latency and improve overall system performance. Synopsys' John Swanson, Jon Ames, Priyank Shukla, and Varun Agrawal highlight the upcoming 1.6T iteration of the Ethernet standard and the ... » read more

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