Sweeping Changes Ahead For Systems Design


Data centers are undergoing a fundamental change, shifting from standard processing models to more data-centric approaches based upon customized hardware, less movement of data, and more pooling of resources. Driven by a flood of web searches, Bitcoin mining, video streaming, data centers are in a race to provide the most efficient and fastest processing possible. But because there are so ma... » read more

Continuous Education For Engineers


Continuous education is essential for engineers, but many companies don't recognize the value or they are unwilling to provide the necessary resources. This should be a line of questioning before every new hire makes the decision about where they want to work, because it not only affects their future career, but also impacts the value they can provide to that company during the course of the... » read more

New Design Approaches For Automotive


The push toward increasing autonomy in automotive is driving new approaches in electronics development. Instead of designing individual components, the focus now is on modeling in context. The ultimate goal is to create an executable specification based on industry-accepted standards, with enough flexibility to be able to customize that spec for different customers. This is a difficult engin... » read more

Debug: The Schedule Killer


Debug often has been labeled the curse of management and schedules. It is considered unpredictable and often can happen close to the end of the development cycle, or even after – leading to frantic attempts at work-arounds. And the problem is growing. "Historically, about 40% of time is spent in debug, and that aspect is becoming more complex," says Vijay Chobisa, director of product manag... » read more

Rocky Road To Designing Chips In The Cloud


EDA is moving to the cloud in fits and starts as tool vendors sort out complex financial models and tradeoffs while recognizing a potentially big new opportunity to provide unlimited processing capacity using a pay-as-you-go approach. By all accounts, a tremendous amount of tire-kicking is happening now as EDA vendors and users delve into the how and why of moving to the cloud for chip desig... » read more

EDA In The Cloud


Hagai Arbel, CEO of Vtool, talks with Semiconductor Engineering about the benefits of moving EDA tools to the cloud, why it has been slow to take off, and what will drive this trend in the future. » read more

Invent A New Way To Do Your Job


My friends own a farm in the southwest of France, and though I spent most of my recent decades around big cities, my village-raised roots are sending me working in the fields every time I have the time. I don’t really care what I’m assigned to, as long as soil, the nearby forest trees, and the sky (preferably blue) will take part. If the job consists of repeating actions, I like to come up ... » read more

Hardware-Software Co-verification (ARM CPU)


In every complex SoC verification process, it is necessary to activate the CPUs during verification and to check the operation of the software they execute alongside the test’s scenarios. At a minimum, basic scenarios such as “boot rom execution” are tested, but in many cases, further scenarios are required. The CPUs themselves are usually proven IPs, but in order to verify their integrat... » read more

Roadblocks For ML in EDA


Is EDA a suitable space for utilizing machine learning (ML)? The answer depends on a number of factors, including where exactly it is being applied, how much support there is from the industry, and whether there are demonstrable advantages. Exactly where ML will play a role has yet to be decided. Replacing existing heuristics with machine learning, for example, would require an industry-wide... » read more

The Verification Mindset


The practice of semiconductor verification has changed substantially over the years, and will continue to do so. The skillset needed for functional verification 20 years ago is hardly recognizable as a verification skillset today, and the same should be expected moving forward as design and verification becomes more abstract, the boundary of what is implemented in hardware versus firmware and s... » read more

← Older posts Newer posts →