Steep Spike For Chip Complexity And Unknowns


Cramming more and different kinds of processors and memories onto a die or into a package is causing the number of unknowns and the complexity of those designs to skyrocket. There are good reasons for combining all of these different devices into an SoC or advanced package. They increase functionality and can offer big improvements in performance and power that are no longer available just b... » read more

EDA On Board With New Package Options


A groundswell of activity around multi-die integration and advanced packaging is pushing EDA companies to develop integration strategies that speed up time to sign-off, increase confidence that a design will work as expected, while still leaving enough room for highly customized solutions. Challenges range from how to architect a design, how to explore the best options and configurations, ho... » read more

Gaps Emerging In System Integration


The system integration challenge is evolving, but existing tools and methods are not keeping up with the task. New tools and flows are needed to handle global concepts, such as power and thermal, that cannot be dealt with at the block level. As we potentially move into a new era where IP gets delivered as physical pieces of silicon, this lack of an accepted flow will become a stumbling block. ... » read more

More Than A Core


Gajinder Pandesar, CTO of UltraSoC, talks with Semiconductor Engineering about why heterogeneous design is changing the starting point for chip design, and why integration is now the real challenge rather than the processor core. https://youtu.be/y0rzopp5HDI » read more

Complexity, Reliability And Cost


Peter Schneider, director of Fraunhofer's Engineering of Adaptive Systems Division, sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to talk about future challenges in complexity, time to market and reliability issues, advanced packaging architectures, and the impact of billions of connected devices. What follows are excerpts of that discussion. SE: What is the biggest challenge you see in the semico... » read more

Partitioning Becomes More Difficult


The divide-and-conquer approach that has been the backbone of verification for decades is becoming more difficult at advanced nodes. There are more interactions from different blocks and features, more power domains, more physical effects to track, and far more complex design rules to follow. This helps explain why the number of tools required on each design—simulation, prototyping, em... » read more

Executive Insight: Wally Rhines


Wally Rhines, president and CEO of [getentity id="22017" e_name="Mentor, a Siemens Business"], sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to talk about industry consolidation, a shift in emphasis from chips to systems, and what the recent acquisition by Siemens will mean for Mentor. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: A year ago it looked as if the entire industry was going to b... » read more

IP Integration Challenges Increase


Semiconductor Engineering sat down with Chris Rowen, CTO of [getentity id="22032" e_name="Cadence"]'s IP group; Rob Aitken, an [getentity id="22186" comment="ARM"] fellow; Patrick Soheili, vice president of product management and corporate development at [getentity id="22242" e_name="eSilicon"]; Navraj Nandra, senior director of marketing for DesignWare analog and mixed-signal IP at [getentity ... » read more

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