Using Analog For AI


If the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. But development of artificial intelligence (AI) applications and the compute platforms for them may be overlooking an alternative technology—analog. The semiconductor industry has a firm understanding of digital electronics and has been very successful making it scale. It is predictable, has good yield, and while every de... » read more

Accelerating Toshiba’s SoC Design with Fusion Compiler


This white paper discusses how Toshiba and Synopsys worked closely to bring-up Fusion Compiler and deploy it throughout Toshiba's advanced proprietary Tachyon Design System. With improved power, performance, and area (PPA), faster time-to-results and a predictable design flow have been validated on the latest, differentiated automotive SoC ASIC products, and Fusion Compiler is being broadly dep... » read more

5 Top Storylines For NAND Biz


2019 is expected to be a busy, if not difficult, year in the NAND flash memory market. Vendors will continue to ramp up 3D NAND, the successor to traditional 2D or planar NAND. Then, over the last year, prices for NAND have dropped with oversupply in the market. What’s in store in 2019? Vendors are expected to rush out their next-generation products. Then, there is a debate whether the... » read more

The Race To Multi-Domain SoCs


K. Charles Janac, president and CEO of Arteris IP, sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to discuss the impact of automotive and AI on chip design. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: What do you see as the biggest changes over the next 12 to 24 months? Janac: There are segments of the semiconductor market that are shrinking, such as DTV and simple IoT. Others are going ... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


M&A QuickLogic acquired SensiML Corporation. Founded in 2017 as a spin-off from Intel, SensiML provides a Software-as-a-Service suite for developing pattern matching sensor algorithms optimized for ultra-low power consumption using machine learning. Details of the deal were not disclosed, though QuickLogic will fund it with shares of common stock. IP CEVA debuted an all-purpose, hybrid... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Chipmakers GlobalFoundries has announced the addition of nine new partners to its RFwave Partner Program, including AkronIC, Ask Radio, Catena, University of Waterloo Centre for Intelligent Antenna and Radio Systems (CIARS), Giga Solution, Helic, Incize, Mentor Graphics and Xpeedic Technology. The RFwave Partner Program builds upon GF’s radio-frequency (RF) efforts. The new partners will pro... » read more

SiC Chip Demand Surges


The silicon carbide (SiC) power semiconductor market is experiencing a sudden surge in demand amid growth for electric vehicles and other systems. But the demand also is causing a tight supply of SiC-based devices in the market, prompting some vendors to add fab capacity in the midst of a tricky wafer-size transition. Some SiC device makers are transitioning from 4- to 6-inch wafers in the f... » read more

3D NAND Flash Wars Begin


3D NAND suppliers are gearing up for a new battle amid a period of price and competitive pressures, racing each other to the next technology generations. Competition is intensifying as a new player enters the 3D NAND market—China’s Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. (YMTC). Backed by billions of dollars in funding from the Chinese government, YMTC recently introduced its first 3D NAND techn... » read more

Next-Gen Memory Ramping Up


The next-generation memory market is heating up as vendors ramp a number of new technologies, but there are some challenges in bringing these products into the mainstream. For years, the industry has been working on a variety of memory technologies, including carbon nanotube RAM, FRAM, MRAM, phase-change memory and ReRAM. Some are shipping, while others are in R&D. Each memory type is di... » read more

Faster Verification With AI, ML


Tool providers have continually improved the performance, capacity, and memory footprint parameters of functional verification engines over the past decade. Today, although the core anchors are still formal verification, simulation, emulation, and FPGA-based prototyping, a new frontier focusing on the verification fabric itself aims to make better use of these engines including planning, alloca... » read more

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