The Trouble With Low-Power Verification


By Ed Sperling If verification accounts for 70% of the non-recurring engineering expenses in a design, what percentage does verifying a low-power design actually consume? Answer: No one knows for sure. The reason has more to do with insufficient data than tools, processes or flows. That’s also the reason that power models have never been created for more than a single design. “Power... » read more

Moving To Open-Source Software


By Ann Steffora Mutschler With the typical cost of software accounting for 40% to 60% of an SoC, semiconductor OEMs are under more pressure than ever to meet margins. As a result, they are drawing on their ecosystem partners to provide a more complete foundation including hardware, software, FPGA prototypes, verification IP and virtual models, as well as an increasing demand for open source so... » read more

EUV Focus Shifts To Affordability


By David Lammers Over the past year, key technologists in the semiconductor industry have come around to believing that EUV lithography will be available for critical mask layers in the next three to five years. What is still up for debate is whether EUV will be cost-effective for low-power consumer SoCs. To penetrate that cost-sensitive market, EUV must overcoming hurdles presented by masks, ... » read more

Make vs. Buy


By Ann Steffora Mutschler The age-old question of whether to make or buy is time immemorial, and is particularly true for the cyclical semiconductor industry. At the end of the day, the answer comes down to how the decision maker feels about having or losing control. Fifteen years ago, whether to make or buy something—be it the design, libraries, memory, implementation, verification, te... » read more

Smart-Grid Designs Solve Low-Power Riddles


By Ellen Konieczny Imagine that you go to your kitchen to get a drink and pass your home’s energy-usage monitor. Due to a recent heat wave, you see that your energy usage is already at what it usually is for the entire month. Yet you’ve still got one week left in your billing cycle. To keep the bill low, you turn your A/C thermostat up a degree and make a mental note to not keep lights o... » read more

Stacked Dies Gain Attention, But So Far Little Traction


By Ed Sperling For the better part of two decades there has been a steady stream of predictions about the abrupt end of Moore’s Law, but it now appears the formula for doubling the number of transistors on a die every couple years will simply dissipate rather than fall off a cliff. While companies such as Intel and IBM continue to develop road maps that extend their road maps all the wa... » read more

The Ins And Outs Of Power Conversion


By Cheryl Ajluni Power conversion is a general term that refers to a system or device producing an output that is different than its input. It can assume many forms—everything from an inverter to an isolated power supply, uninterruptable power supply (UPS), or AC/DC converter. Power conversion, like low-power design, is fairly commonplace these days. Nevertheless, recent advances in digital ... » read more

More Choices But Less Design Freedom


By Ed Sperling “What if” is an indelible part of the lexicon of every SoC architect and design engineer from the front end of the design flow all the way to manufacturing, but while the terminology will persist for years to come the answers and the value of those answers are starting to change. Complexity, cost and the need for better integration have simultaneously increased the numb... » read more

Outsourcing’s New Face


By Ed Sperling As the semiconductor industry digs out from one of the worst downturns in decades, the business of semiconductor design and engineering is changing. While the architecture and features are still being developed by chip companies, the actual work of developing the chip increasingly is being done by third parties. Outsourcing is hardly new concept in business. In the early pa... » read more

Pulling Power Out Of Thin Air


By Cheryl Ajluni It wasn’t all that long ago that voice communication via a traditional landline was the norm. At the time, consumers would have been hard pressed to imagine a world in which anytime, anywhere communication (voice and data) with a device no bigger than the human hand was possible. Many of those same consumers might today find it hard to conceive of a world in which their... » read more

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