The recent Design Automation Conference in Las Vegas was an indication of how the electronics industry is evolving. In its formative years, DAC was focused on the fundamental algorithms emerging from academic research and industrial R&D, that enabled the continuation of the Moore’s Law complexity curve. (Indeed, the… Read More
Author: Tom Dillinger
The Complexity of Block-Level Placement @ 56thDAC
Samsung Foundry Update 2019
Samsung Foundry recently held their 4th annual technology forum in Santa Clara. This article reviews the highlights of the presentations. There were two prevalent themes throughout – focused execution on the current process roadmap, and the introduction of the 3nm process node features and schedule.
Before getting into … Read More
TSMC Technology Symposium Review Part II
TSMC recently held their annual Technology Symposium in Santa Clara. Part 1 of this article focused on the semiconductor process highlights. This part reviews the advanced packaging technologies presented at the symposium.
TSMC has clearly made a transition from a “pure” wafer-level foundry to a supplier of complex integrated… Read More
2019 TSMC Technology Symposium Review Part I
Each year, TSMC conducts two major customer events worldwide – the TSMC Technology Symposium in the Spring and the TSMC Open Innovation Platform Ecosystem Forum in the Fall. The Technology Symposium event was recently held in Santa Clara, CA, providing an extensive update on the status of advanced semiconductor and packaging… Read More
Update on SystemC for High-Level Synthesis
The scope of current system designs continues to present challenges to verification and implementation engineering teams. The algorithmic complexity of image/voice processing applications needs a high-level language description for efficient representation. The development and testing of embedded firmware routines… Read More
Project Verification Planning for Analog Designs
Successful projects leverage the investment in comprehensive methodology and resource planning, covering design and analysis flows – that planning effort is especially important for functional verification.
The emergence of complex SoC designs for advanced automotive applications has led to a major focus on verification… Read More
AI at the Edge
Frequent Semiwiki readers are well aware of the industry momentum behind machine learning applications. New opportunities are emerging at a rapid pace. High-level programming language semantics and compilers to capture and simulate neural network models have been developed to enhance developer productivity (link). Researchers… Read More
Architecture for Machine Learning Applications at the Edge
Machine learning applications in data centers (or “the cloud”) have pervasively changed our environment. Advances in speech recognition and natural language understanding have enabled personal assistants to augment our daily lifestyle. Image classification and object recognition techniques enrich our social media experience,… Read More
The Latest from Samsung Semiconductor
Earlier this Spring, Samsung Foundry held a technology forum, describing their process roadmap and supporting ecosystem developments (link). Recently, the larger Samsung Semiconductor organization conducted a Tech Day at their campus in San Jose, presenting (and demo-ing) a broader set of products. The focus of the day was… Read More
IBIS-AMI Model Generation Simplified
The increasing demand for data communication throughput between system components has driven the requirement for faster SerDes IP data rates. The complexity of the transmit (Tx) and receive (Rx) signal conditioning functions has correspondingly evolved. As a result, the simulation methodology for SerDes electrical interface… Read More
Application-Specific Lithography: Sense Amplifier and Sub-Wordline Driver Metal Patterning in DRAM