TSMC OIP – Enabling System Innovation

TSMC OIP – Enabling System Innovation
by Daniel Payne on 11-25-2022 at 6:00 am

TSMC OIP roadmap min

On November 10th I watched the presentation by L.C. Lu, TSMC Fellow & VP, as he talked about enabling system innovation with dozens of slides in just 26 minutes. TSMC is the number one semiconductor foundry in the world, and their Open Innovation Platform (OIP) events are popular and well attended as the process technology and… Read More


Architectural Planning of 3D IC

Architectural Planning of 3D IC
by Daniel Payne on 11-15-2022 at 10:00 am

3D IC min

Before chiplets arrived, it seemed like designing an electronic system was a bit simpler, as a system on chip (SoC) methodology was well understood, and each SoC was mounted inside a package, then the packages for each component were interconnected on a printed circuit board (PCB). The emerging trend to design a 3D IC using chiplets… Read More


SoC Design Closure Just Got Smarter

SoC Design Closure Just Got Smarter
by Daniel Payne on 11-08-2022 at 10:00 am

iterations min

Near the end of any large SoC design project, the RTL code is nearly finished, floorplanning has been done, place and route has a first-pass, static timing has started, but the timing and power goals aren’t met. So, iteration loops continue on blocks and full-chip for weeks or even months. It could take a design team 5-7 days… Read More


Why Use PADS Professional Premium for Electronic Design

Why Use PADS Professional Premium for Electronic Design
by Daniel Payne on 11-01-2022 at 6:00 am

PADS Designer min

My IC design career started just a few years before PADS got started in 1985 with a DOS-based tool for PCB design. A lot has changed since then, as PADS was acquired by Mentor Graphics in 2001, and continued to grow under Siemens EDA, now with four versions to choose from, where the top version is called PADS Professional Premium:

  • PADS
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Clock Aging Issues at Sub-10nm Nodes

Clock Aging Issues at Sub-10nm Nodes
by Daniel Payne on 10-20-2022 at 10:00 am

IC failure rate chart, clock aging

Semiconductor chips are all tested prior to shipment in order to weed out early failures, however there are some more subtle reliability effects that only appear in the longer term, like clock aging. There’s even a classic chart that shows the “bathtub curve” of failure rates over time:

If reality and expectations… Read More


DFT Moves up to 2.5D and 3D IC

DFT Moves up to 2.5D and 3D IC
by Daniel Payne on 10-06-2022 at 10:00 am

2.5D and 3D chiplets min

The annual ITC event was held the last week of September, and I kept reading all of the news highlights from the EDA vendors, as the time spent on the tester can be a major cost and the value to catching defective chips from reaching production is so critical. Chiplets, 2.5D and 3D IC design have caught the attention of the test world, … Read More


Analyzing Clocks at 7nm and Smaller Nodes

Analyzing Clocks at 7nm and Smaller Nodes
by Daniel Payne on 10-04-2022 at 10:00 am

Aging Clock

In the good old days the clock signal looked like a square wave , and had a voltage swing of 5 volts, however with 7nm technology the clock signals can now look more like a sawtooth signal and may not actually reach the full Vdd value of 0.65V inside the core of a chip. I’ll cover some of the semiconductor market trends, and then challenges… Read More


Webinar: Post-layout Circuit Sizing Optimization

Webinar: Post-layout Circuit Sizing Optimization
by Daniel Payne on 09-29-2022 at 4:00 pm

IC design workflow min

My IC design career started out with manually sizing transistors to improve performance, while minimizing layout area and power consumption. Fortunately we don’t have to do manual transistor sizing anymore, thanks to EDA tools that are quicker and more accurate than manual methods. MunEDA is an EDA vendor that has developed… Read More


New ECO Product – Synopsys PrimeClosure

New ECO Product – Synopsys PrimeClosure
by Daniel Payne on 09-29-2022 at 10:00 am

ECO types min

New EDA product launches are always an exciting time, and I could hear the energy and optimism from the voice of Manoj Chacko at Synopsys in our Zoom call about Synopsys PrimeClosure. During the physical implementation phase for IC designs there’s a big challenge to reach timing closure, and with advanced nodes the number… Read More


3D IC – Managing the System-level Netlist

3D IC – Managing the System-level Netlist
by Daniel Payne on 09-27-2022 at 10:00 am

2.5D IC min

I just did a Google search for “3D IC”, and was stunned to see it return a whopping 476,000 results. This topic is trending, because more companies are using advanced IC packaging to meet their requirements, and yet the engineers doing the 3D IC design have new challenges to overcome. One of those challenges is creating… Read More