Leveraging Chip Data To Improve Productivity


The semiconductor ecosystem is scrambling to use data more effectively in order to increase the productivity of design teams, improve yield in the fab, and ultimately increase reliability of systems in the field. Data collection, analysis, and utilization is at the center of all these efforts and more. Data can be collected at every point in the design-through-manufacturing flow and into the f... » read more

Efficient Verification Of RISC-V Processors


For some time, application-specific instruction processors (ASIPs) have been developed for specialized applications. These have required multi-disciplinary teams with sufficient expertise to develop the instruction set, microarchitecture, and software toolchain. Few companies have had the right combination of skills to develop ASIPs so relatively few have been developed. With the advent of R... » read more

Everything, Everywhere, All At Once: Big Data Reimagines Verification Predictability And Efficiency


Big data is a term that has been around for many years. The list of applications for big data are endless, but the process stays the same: capture, process and analyze. With new, enabling verification solutions, big data technologies can improve your verification process efficiency and predict your next chip sign-off. By providing a big data infrastructure, with state-of-the-art technologies... » read more

Unified AI/ML Solution Helps Accelerate Verification Curve


With the surge in usage requirements and increasing customer demands, hardware design is quickly becoming more complex. The rapid change in market trends, with a greater focus on technologies such as electric vehicles, dictates the demand for efficient power management and high-performance processing. Verification throughput continues to be a bottleneck as SoC designs increase in size, and so d... » read more

Using Machine Learning To Automate Debug Of Simulation Regression Results


Regression failure debug is usually a manual process wherein verification engineers debug hundreds, if not thousands of failing tests. Machine learning (ML) technologies have enabled an automated debug process that not only accelerates debug but also eliminates errors introduced by manual efforts. This white paper discusses how verification engineers can more efficiently analyze, bin, triage... » read more

A New Year’s Wish


Every year I run a predictions article. It is a mashup of ideas from many people within the industry, and while many predictions are somewhat self-serving, there are other which come more from the heart — or perhaps they are dreams rather than expectations. I see hope in some of those, particularly the ones that look toward sustainability within our industry, and of our industry. Just like... » read more

Power Issues Causing More Respins At 7nm And Below


Power consumption has been a major design consideration for some time, but it is far from being a solved issue. In fact, an increasing number of designs have a plethora of power-related problems, and those problems are getting worse in new chip designs. Many designs today are power-limited — or perhaps more accurately stated, thermal-limited. A chip only can consume as much power as it is ... » read more

EDA, IP Growth Surges Again


EDA tools and IP revenue increased 8.9% in Q3 of 2022 to $3.767 billion, up from $3.458 billion in 2021, according to a just-released report from the ESD Alliance at SEMI. All regions except Japan reported growth, but the numbers were a bit more uneven in Q3 than in recent quarters. For example, total silicon IP dropped 1%, while services revenue grew 20.8%. At the same time, EDA revenue jum... » read more

Selecting The Right RISC-V Core


With an increasing number of companies interested in devices based on the RISC-V ISA, and a growing number of cores, accelerators, and infrastructure components being made available, either commercially or in open-source form, end users face an increasingly difficult challenge of ensuring they make the best choices. Each user likely will have a set of needs and concerns that almost equals th... » read more

Design And Verification Methodologies Breaking Down


Tools, methodologies and flows that have been in place since the dawn of semiconductor design are breaking down, but this time there isn't a large pool of researchers coming up with potential solutions. The industry is on its own to formulate those ideas, and that will take a lot of cooperation between EDA companies, fabs, and designers, which has not been their strong point in the past. It ... » read more

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