Modeling PCBs For Common Causes Of Failure


By Theresa Duncan and Michael Blattau When designing printed circuit boards (PCBs), keep in mind the major causes of electronic failure: thermal cycling, vibration, and mechanical shock and drop. You can perform a variety of physical tests to determine how and why electronics fail, however, a much faster and cost-effective solution is PCB modeling and simulation. When simulation is used i... » read more

Improving Automotive Electronic Hardware With SAE J3168


By Theresa Duncan and Craig Hillman The race is on for fully autonomous vehicles. Industry giants like Tesla, Google, Uber and almost all major automotive companies are competing to deliver state-of-the-art self-driving vehicles. However, the development of new, cutting-edge technologies demands a similar wave of reliability, repairability and warranty standards that automotive manufactur... » read more

112G SerDes Reliability


Priyank Shukla, product marketing manager at Synopsys, digs into 112Gbps SerDes, why it’s important to examine the performance of these devices in the context of a system, what is acceptable channel loss, and how density can affect performance, power and noise. » read more

Preparing For A Barrage Of Physical Effects


Advancements in 3D transistors and packaging continue to enable better power and performance in a given footprint, but they also require more attention to physical effects stemming from both increased density and vertical stacking. Even in planar chips developed at 3nm, it will be more difficult to build both thin and thick oxide devices, which will have an impact on everything from power to... » read more

Managing Worst Case Power Conditions


With each new technology node, especially FinFET, the dynamic conditions within a chip are changing and becoming more complex in terms of process speeds, thermal activity and supply variation. Dennard scaling brought about the ability for power to be scaled down with each successive node so that power per unit area stayed roughly constant. However, as highlighted by John Hennessy at last y... » 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

Rising To Meet The Thermal Challenge


Thermal effects on electrical performance have always existed; processor speed limits are set by thermal limits, and power has been a key concern for the mobile and datacenter markets for a decade. Increased electrical content logically generates more heat, which affects system performance. For example, in the automotive market, ADAS and infotainment systems are drastically increasing automotiv... » read more

New Approaches For Dealing With Thermal Problems


New thermal monitoring, simulation and analysis techniques are beginning to coalesce in chips developed at leading-edge nodes and in advanced packages in order to keep those devices running at optimal temperatures. This is particularly important in applications such as AI, automotive, data centers and 5G. Heat can kill a chip, but it also can cause more subtle effects such as premature aging... » read more

Benefits Of In-Chip Thermal Sensing


The latest SoCs on advanced semiconductor nodes typically include a fabric of sensors spread across the die, and for good reason. But why and what are the benefits? This first blog of a three-part series explores some of the key applications for in-chip thermal sensing and why embedding in-chip monitoring IP is an essential step to maximize performance and reliability and minimize power, or a... » read more

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