At DesignCon 2020, ANSYS sponsored a series of very high-quality presentations. Some focused on advanced methods and new technology exploration and some provided head-on, practical and actionable capabilities to improve advanced designs. The presentation I will discuss here falls into the latter category. The topic was… Read More
Author: Mike Gianfagna
It’s The Small Stuff That Gets You …
The last session I attended at DesignCon 2020 wasn’t a session at all. Rather it was an interactive discussion with Todd Westerhoff, product manager for electronic board systems at Mentor Graphics. Todd made some observations about the way high-performance PCBs are designed today and perhaps the way they should be designed. … Read More
AI Interposer Power Modeling and HBM Power Noise Prediction Studies
I attended a session on 2.5D silicon interposer analysis at DesignCon 2020. Like many presentations at this show, ecosystem collaboration was a focus. In this session, Jinsong Hu (principal application engineer at Cadence) and Yongsong He (senior staff engineer at Enflame Tech) presented approaches for interposer power modeling… Read More
Signal Channel Design and Simulation for Silicon Interposer Packaging on High-Speed SerDes
This year is the 25th anniversary for DesignCon. The show has changed a lot over the years. Today, it’s a vibrant showcase of all aspects of advanced product design – from ICs to boards to systems. The show floor reflects the diverse ecosystem. If you missed it this year, definitely plan to go next year.
The DesignCon technical program… Read More
Advanced ASICs – It Takes an Ecosystem
I remember the days of the IDM (integrated device manufacturer). For me, it was RCA, where I worked for 15 years as the company changed from RCA to GE and then ultimately to Harris Semiconductor. It’s a bit of a cliché, but life was simpler then, from a customer point of view at least. RCA did it all. We designed all the IP, did the physical… Read More
The Future of Chip Design in the Internet Age
Huge designs, spectacular design costs, astronomical capital expenditure. Welcome to the present day semiconductor industry. As discussed in my prior post, the days of democratized silicon access have been replaced by an elite market. Custom chips are once again a rich person’s game. Does it have to stay this way? I personally… Read More
Chip Design – Coming of Age in the Computer Age
Previously, I examined chip design in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It was a nostalgic ride – thanks to all those who shared their stories. I enjoyed reading all of them. I drew two basic conclusions in the prior post:
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Chip Design Problems Remain the Same, More or Less
For those who may not know me, here is a brief introduction. I started in the semiconductor business when RCA was still making vacuum tubes and I wrote EDA software before there was an EDA industry. I’ve designed and sold chips and developed, sold and used EDA tools at companies as big as General Electric and as small as seven people.… Read More
TSMC Unveils the World’s Most Advanced Logic Technology at IEDM