Week In Review: Design, Low Power

Tools & IP
Ansys’ RedHawk-SC multiphysics signoff software was certified for all TSMC advanced process technologies, including N16, N12, N7, N6 and N5. The certification includes extraction, power integrity and reliability, signal electromigration (EM) and thermal reliability analysis and statistical EM budgeting analysis.

Aldec launched a new FPGA accelerator board for high performance computing, high frequency trading applications and high speed FPGA prototyping. The HES-XCKU11P-DDR4 is a 1U form factor board featuring a Xilinx Kintex UltraScale+ FPGA, a PCIe interface and two QSFP-DD connectors. It can connect with an external DDR4 memory module via a SO-DIMM memory socket while the QSFP-DD connectors enable network acceleration and wired communication projects at up to a total of 400Gbit/s bandwidth.

The MIPI Alliance published MIPI RF Front End Control Interface (MIPI RFFE) v3.0. The latest version of the specification is designed to deliver tighter timing precision and reduced latencies for 5G rollout. MIPI RFFE v3.0 utilizes multiple, complementary triggers to synchronize and schedule changes in register settings, either within a slave device or across multiple devices, to improve throughput efficiencies and reduce packet latency. It is backward compatible with previous generations of the specification.

Silex Insight updated its Public Key Engine (BA414EP) security IP with the Identity Based Cryptography (SM9) option, compliant to Chinese OSCCA cryptographic standards. The footprint can be scaled to the requirements needed and targets automotive and other applications requiring OSCCA certification.

Numbers
Rambus reported first quarter 2020 financial results with revenue of $64 million, up 32% compared to the same quarter last year. On a GAAP basis, the company saw a loss per share of $0.07 for the quarter, improved from a loss per share of $0.24 in Q1 2019. Rambus CEO Luc Seraphin noted that the company saw record revenue for both its silicon IP and chip businesses. The memory interface chip business also delivered record revenue for the fourth consecutive quarter.

Deals
Imagination Technologies and BAIC Group Industrial Investment Co., Ltd. (BAIC Capital), inked a joint venture agreement to establish an automotive fabless semiconductor company for the development of automotive grade SoCs, related software, and provision of support services. The JV will be based in Beijing and will license GPU and neural network acceleration IP and software from Imagination. Bravo Lee, who has held senior roles in Imagination, MediaTek, Qualcomm and Spreadtrum will be CEO of the JV.

Events
Many conferences have now been cancelled, postposed, or moved online. Find out what’s happening with each at our events page. How about checking out a webinar instead?

DAC will be a virtual event this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It will still take place July 19 – 23, 2020. More details on the new virtual format will be available at a later date.

If you have an event planned but not sure how to start moving it online, ACM published a report detailing some best practices for virtual conferences. It discusses the tasks required of organizers, platforms, and financial considerations, alongside examples of conferences that have gone virtual and lessons learned from their experiences.