EDA’s Hedge Plays


While 14/16nm process technologies with finFETs and double patterning have pushed complexity to new heights, the move to 10nm fundamentally will change a number of very basic elements of the design through manufacturing flow—and EDA vendors will be caught in the middle of having to make hard choices between foundries, processes, packaging approaches, and potentially which markets to serve. ... » read more

Planning For The Unexpected


Last month we undertook a big family trip. My parents, my brother and his family came from Belgium to California, and together we embarked on a trip across the Northwest United States. Starting in Silicon Valley we drove via Lake Tahoe and Salt Lake City to Yellowstone. Afterward, we crossed over to Seattle and Portland to finish off the trip with visits to Crater Lake and Lassen Volcanic Natio... » read more

Reversing Course, With A Twist


Semiconductor Engineering is running an extended series of articles that examine the assertion that the end of Moore’s Law will have profound implications for the entire semiconductor, EDA and IP industries. Part one of this article, which focuses on the EDA industry, addressed the question about who was going to pay for future development of EDA tools for the latest production nodes. The ind... » read more

Blog Review: July 23


Mentor’s John Day says that within the decade you will be able to contact a real person from your car. Hopefully that doesn't mean marketing people will be able to contact you while you’re stuck in traffic. Cadence’s Brian Fuller says the future of EDA in the automotive market isn’t just about chips. Think security, software and cost reduction. It’s not just SoCs that are going ... » read more

More Effective Test: Slack-Based Transition Delay


Semiconductor companies have come to rely on delay testing to attain high defect coverage of manufactured digital integrated circuits (ICs). Delay testing uses transition delay (TD) patterns created by automatic test pattern generation (ATPG) tools to target subtle manufacturing defects in fabricated designs. Although standard TD testing improves defect coverage beyond levels stuck-at patterns ... » read more

Where Do We Stand With CDC?


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss where the industry stands on clock domain crossing with Charlie Janac, CEO of Arteris; Shaker Sarwary, VP of Formal Verification Products at Atrenta; Pranav Ashar, CTO at Real Intent; and Namit Gupta, CAE, Verification Group at Synopsys. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: What are the biggest use models for CDC verification today... » read more

DFM And Multipatterning


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss DFM at advanced nodes with Kuang-Kuo Lin, director of foundry design enablement at Samsung Electronics; Jongwook Kye, lithography modeling and architecture fellow at GlobalFoundries; David Abercrombie, advanced physical verification methodology program manager at Mentor Graphics; Ya-Chieh Lai, engineering director for DFM/CLS silicon signoff and ver... » read more

The Week In Review: Design


Tools Cadence unveiled two new tools. The first is a rapid prototyping platform that the company claims will shorten bring-up time by 70%, with 4X improvements in capacity, with IEEE 1801 support for low-power verification through its emulation platform. The second is a single and multi-corner custom/analog extraction tool, which it claims will improve performance by 5X. The tool has been cert... » read more

Blog Review: July 16


Mentor’s Scott Salzwedel describes a conversation that could very well happen in the future and it raises an interesting idea. As medical electronics proliferate, will emergency medical teams need to include out systems engineers? Cadence’s Brian Fuller has a summer engineering project that resembles the Bridge Over the River Kwai. He should win an Oscar for this one. Ansys’ Bill ... » read more

The Week In Review: Design


M&A CEVA bought RivieraWaves, which makes IP for WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity. CEVA said the deal will boost its market to 35 billion connected devices within six years. The two companies have been collaborating in the WiFi market for the past couple of years. Total cost of the deal is $19 million. Mentor Graphics acquired XS Embedded GmbH, a German-based developer of automotive-read... » read more

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