Using AI And Bugs To Find Other Bugs

By Ann Mutschler - 24 Nov, 2020 - Comments: 0

Debug is starting to be rethought and retooled as chips become more complex and more tightly integrated into packages or other systems, particularly in safety- and mission-critical applications where life expectancy is significantly longer. Today, the predominant bug-finding approaches use the ubiquitous constrained random/coverage driven verification technology, or formal verification techn... » read more

Brute-Force Analysis Not Keeping Up With IC Complexity

By Brian Bailey - 24 Nov, 2020 - Comments: 0

Much of the current design and verification flow was built on brute force analysis, a simple and direct approach. But that approach rarely scales, and as designs become larger and the number of interdependencies increases, ensuring the design always operates within spec is becoming a monumental task. Unless design teams want to keep adding increasing amounts of margin, they have to locate th... » read more

Speeding Up AI With Vector Instructions

By Ann Mutschler - 04 Nov, 2020 - Comments: 0

A search is underway across the industry to find the best way to speed up machine learning applications, and optimizing hardware for vector instructions is gaining traction as a key element in that effort. Vector instructions are a class of instructions that enable parallel processing of data sets. An entire array of integers or floating point numbers is processed in a single operation, elim... » read more

Using Verification Data More Effectively

By Ann Mutschler - 29 Oct, 2020 - Comments: 0

Verification is producing so much data from complex designs that engineering teams need to decide what to keep, how long to keep it, and what they can learn from that data for future projects. Files range from hundreds of megabytes to hundreds of gigabytes, depending on the type of verification task, but the real value may not be obvious unless AI/machine learning algorithms are applied to a... » read more

I’m Almost Done

By Hagai Arbel - 12 Oct, 2020 - Comments: 0

The city of Belgrade is renovating the street where I live. They are also building a new building next to mine so that I can see the construction work from my balcony. Last week, they blocked the street for some 20 minutes, and people got out of their cars and waited outside for the road to open. The construction workers were not in a hurry, and it seemed like everyone was ok with that, so I... » read more

Israel: Startup Powerhouse

By Ed Sperling - 05 Oct, 2020 - Comments: 0

Israel is at the front of pack with China and the United States when it comes to tech startups. But when it comes to large, indigenous tech giants, the country is nowhere to be seen. Virtually every major semiconductor company does business in Israel, and many have a strong presence there through centers of excellence or companies they have acquired. But after decades of innovation ranging f... » read more

System-Level Packaging Tradeoffs

By Ann Mutschler - 30 Sep, 2020 - Comments: 0

Leading-edge applications such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, automotive, and 5G, all require high bandwidth, higher performance, lower power and lower latency. They also need to do this for the same or less money. The solution may be disaggregating the SoC onto multiple die in a package, bringing memory closer to processing elements and delivering faster turnaround time. But ... » read more

New Uses For Assertions

By Ann Mutschler - 24 Sep, 2020 - Comments: 0

Assertions have been a staple in formal verification for years. Now they are being examined to see what else they can be used for, and the list is growing. Traditionally, design and verification engineers have used assertions in specific ways. First, there are assertions for formal verification, which are used by designers to show when something is wrong. Those assertions help to pinpoint wh... » read more

Is DVFS Worth The Effort?

By Brian Bailey - 10 Sep, 2020 - Comments: 2

Almost all designs have become power-aware and are being forced to consider every power saving technique, but not all of them are yielding the expected results. Moreover, they can add significant complexity into designs, increasing the time it takes to get to tapeout and boosting up the cost. Dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS) is one such power and energy saving technique now being... » read more

Components For Open-Source Verification

By Brian Bailey - 02 Sep, 2020 - Comments: 2

Defining an open-source verification methodology is a lot more difficult than just developing an open-source simulator. This is the reality facing open-source hardware such as RISC-V. Some people may be asking for the corresponding open-source verification, but that is a much tougher problem — and it is not going to be solved in the short term. Part one examined the reasons why open-source... » 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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