One-On-One: Lip-Bu Tan

By Ed Sperling - 26 May, 2021 - Comments: 0

Lip-Bu Tan, CEO of Cadence, sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to talk about the impact of massive increases in data across a variety of industries, the growing need for computational software, and the potential implications of U.S.-China relations. What follows are excerpts of that discussion. SE: What do you see as the biggest change for the chip industry? Tan: We're in our fifth g... » read more

Blog Review: April 7

By Jesse Allen - 07 Apr, 2021 - Comments: 0

Cadence's Paul McLellan checks out the US National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence report and what it recommends for funding the development of AI as well as semiconductor manufacturing and research. Siemens EDA's Ray Salemi continues exploring Python for verification and shows how to use cocotb to create a simple bus functional model and connect it to a testbench. Synopsys... » read more

The Problem With Benchmarks

By Brian Bailey - 11 Feb, 2021 - Comments: 1

Benchmarks long have been used to compare products, but what makes a good benchmark and who should be trusted with their creation? The answer to those questions is more difficult than it may appear on the surface, and some benchmarks are being used in surprising ways. Everyone loves a simple, clear benchmark, but that is only possible when the selection criteria are equally simple. Unfortuna... » read more

Taming Non-Predictable Systems

By Brian Bailey - 28 Jan, 2021 - Comments: 0

How predictable are semiconductor systems? The industry aims to create predictable systems and yet when a carrot is dangled, offering the possibility of faster, cheaper, or some other gain, decision makers invariably decide that some degree of uncertainty is warranted. Understanding uncertainty is at least the first step to making informed decisions, but new tooling is required to assess the im... » read more

The Good, Bad And Unknowns Of Flexible Devices

By Ed Sperling - 27 Jan, 2021 - Comments: 0

Flexible hybrid electronics are beginning to proliferate in consumer, medical, and industrial applications due to their comparatively low weight, thin profile, and the ability to literally bend the rules of design. Open any smart phone today and you're likely to find one or more of these flexible boards. Unlike standard printed circuit boards, FHE devices are printed using a combination of r... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Dec. 23

By Mark LaPedus - 23 Dec, 2020 - Comments: 0

Magnetic glue Nanyang Technological University (NTU) Singapore has developed a new magnetic-activated glue technology. Conventional glue or adhesives involve epoxy and related materials. These adhesives are used to bond plastics, ceramics and wood. The adhesives are bonded and cured using moisture, heat or light. The curing temperatures range from room temperature to 80 degrees Celsius. ... » read more

RISC-V Verification Challenges Spread

By Ann Mutschler - 22 Dec, 2020 - Comments: 0

The RISC-V ecosystem is struggling to keep pace with rapid innovation and customization, which is increasing the amount of verification work required for each design and spreading that work out across more engineers at more companies. The historical assumption is that verification represents 60% to 80% or more of SoC project effort in terms of cost and time for a mature, mainstream processor... » read more

Simplifying And Speeding Up Verification

By Ed Sperling - 16 Jun, 2020 - Comments: 1

Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss what's ahead for verification with Daniel Schostak, Arm fellow and verification architect; Ty Garibay, vice president of hardware engineering at Mythic; Balachandran Rajendran, CTO at Dell EMC; Saad Godil, director of applied deep learning research at Nvidia; Nasr Ullah, senior director of performance architecture at SiFive. What follows are excerpt... » read more

The Increasingly Ordinary Task Of Verifying RISC-V

By Ann Mutschler - 03 Jun, 2020 - Comments: 0

As RISC-V processor development matures and its usage in SoCs and microcontrollers grows, engineering teams are starting to look beyond the challenges of the processor core itself. So far, the majority of industry verification efforts have focused on ISA compliance to standardize the RISC-V core. Now the focus is shifting to be how to handle verification as the system grows, especially as this... » read more

AI’s Impact On Power And Performance

By Ed Sperling - 14 Nov, 2019 - Comments: 0

AI/ML is creeping into everything these days. There are AI chips, and there are chips that include elements of AI, particularly for inferencing. The big question is how well they will affect performance and power, and the answer isn't obvious. There are two main phases of AI, the training and the inferencing. Almost all training is done in the cloud using extremely large data sets. In fact, ... » read more

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Knowledge Centers
Entities, people and technologies explored

Shift Left Is The Tip Of The Iceberg

A transformative change is underway for semiconductor design and EDA. New languages, models, and abstractions will need to be created.

by Brian Bailey

Partitioning In The Chiplet Era

Understanding how chiplets interact under different workloads is critical to ensuring signal integrity and optimal performance in heterogeneous designs.

by Ann Mutschler

3.5D: The Great Compromise

Pros and cons of a middle-ground chiplet assembly that combines 2.5D and 3D-IC.

by Ed Sperling

AI’s Role In Chip Design Widens, Drawing In New Startups

Focus is on letting engineers do much more with the same or fewer resources — and less drudgery.

by Karen Heyman

Key Technologies To Extend EUV To 14 Angstroms

Alongside high-NA EUV will be better-performing photoresists, reduced roughness using passivation and etch, and lateral etching to reduce tip-to-tip dimensions.

by Laura Peters

What Comes After HBM For Chiplets

The standard for high-bandwidth memory limits design freedom at many levels, but that is required for interoperability. What freedoms can be taken from other functions to make chiplets possible?

by Brian Bailey

Memory Fundamentals For Engineers

eBook: Nearly everything you need to know about memory, including detailed explanations of the different types of memory; how and where these are used today; what's changing, which memories are successful and which ones might be in the future; and the limitations of each memory type.

by The SE Staff

Why Small Fab And Assembly Houses Are Thriving

Megafabs churning out the most advanced processors are not the only game in town.

by Bryon Moyer

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