Researchers Learn New Tricks


There is very little EDA research being done in universities today, except for very narrow fields such as [getkc id="33" kc_name="formal verification"]. It has been a steady decline over quite a long period of time. There are several reasons for this. The first is money. Money has to flow into the universities to pay for the research, and this has to lead to some form of prestige for the est... » read more

Speeding Up Neural Networks


Neural networking is gaining traction as the best way of collecting and moving critical data from the physical world and processing it in the digital world. Now the question is how to speed up this whole process. But it isn't a straightforward engineering challenge. Neural networking itself is in a state of almost constant flux and development, which makes it something of a moving target. Th... » read more

Wear Down Your Virtual Prototype


Just when you think you know all variations of embedded software development you are exposed to another domain of unique and interesting challenges. This happened to me awhile back when I started to learn about the software for Flash Memory controllers. You can read a lot about Flash market growth predictions or about the physical challenges of the next generation storage technologies he... » read more

IC Validator Programmable EERC Mixed Mode Checking Technology


Traditional visual inspection or manual checking for electrical rule compliance is both time consuming and error prone. A new, comprehensive reliability solution is needed to reduce time to market, improve reliability and ensure longer device operation. This paper is a companion to the introductory IC Validator programmable Extended Electrical Rule Check (EERC) white paper on netlist domain che... » read more

Whatever Happened To High-Level Synthesis?


A few years ago, [getkc id="105" comment="high-level synthesis"] (HLS) was probably the most talked about emerging technology. It was to be the heart of a new Electronic System Level (ESL) flow. Today, we hear much less about the progress being made in this area. Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss this with Bryan Bowyer, director of engineering for high level design and verificati... » read more

Blog Review: April 26


Cadence's Paul McLellan provides an introduction to single-event effects and the challenges created when high-energy neutrons bombard chips. Synopsys' Robert Vamosi looks at the strange turf war between two worms battling for control of IoT security cameras. Mentor's Ayan Pahwa contends that it's the duty of IoT device developers to take security as paramount factor and provide good secur... » read more

The Week In Review: IoT


Finance August Home (formerly known as Kease), a San Francisco-based supplier of smart door locks and doorbell cameras, reports raising about $17.7 million from venture capitalists, with plans to lock down just shy of $25 million in private funding. The information was disclosed in a Form D filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Protocols Comcast has joined the LoRa Alliance a... » read more

The Week In Review: Design


Tools Mentor unveiled new formal-based technologies in the Questa Verification Solution. It offers formal-based RTL-to-RTL equivalence checking flows optimized for verification of manual low-power clock gating, bug fix and ECO validation, and ISO 26262 safety mechanism verification, which the company says which can reduce verification turnaround time by 10X. The app also offers expanded cloc... » read more

Moore’s Law: A Status Report


Moore's Law has been synonymous with "smaller, faster, cheaper" for the past 52 years, but increasingly it is viewed as just one of a number of options—some competing, some complementary—as the chip industry begins zeroing in on specific market needs. This does not make [getkc id="74" comment="Moore's Law"] any less relevant. The number of companies racing from 16/14nm to 7nm is higher t... » read more

Cloud Computing Chips Changing


An explosion in cloud services is making chip design for the server market more challenging, more diverse, and much more competitive. Unlike datacenter number crunching of the past, the cloud addresses a broad range of applications and data types. So while a server chip architecture may work well for one application, it may not be the optimal choice for another. And the more those tasks beco... » read more

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