Thermal considerations have always been a concern in electronic systems but to a large extent these could be relatively well partitioned from other concerns. Within a die you analyze for mean and peak temperatures and mitigate with package heat-sinks, options to de-rate the clock, or a variety of other methods. At the system level… Read More
John Lee: Market Trends, Raising the Bar on Signoff
I talked to John Lee (GM of the ANSYS Semiconductor BU) recently about his views on market trends and the ANSYS big-picture theme for DAC 2018. He set the stage by saying he really liked Wally’s view on trends (see my blog on Wally’s keynote at U2U). John said these confirm what he is seeing – a trend to specialization, some around… Read More
Webinar: Thermal and Reliability for ADAS and Autonomy
OK, so maybe the picture here is a little over the top, but thermal and reliability considerations in automotive in general and in ADAS and autonomy in particular, are no joke. Overheating, thermal-induced EM and warping at the board-level, in the package or interposers, are concerns in any environment but especially when you’re… Read More
Peering Over the Timing Edge
I wrote recently about a yield problem which mobile vendors have been finding for devices built in advanced technologies. This was a performance issue (the devices worked fine at lower clock speeds), pointing to a discrepancy in some devices between predicted and observed timing. These were experienced design teams, using state… Read More
Stress and Aging
These failings aren’t just a cross we humans bear; they’re also a concern for chips, particularly in electrical over-stress (EOS) and aging of the circuitry. Such concerns are not new, but they are taking on new urgency given the high reliability and long lifetime expectations we have for safety-critical components in cars and… Read More
A New Problem for High-Performance Mobile
About 6 months ago, ANSYS was approached by a couple of leading mobile platform vendors/suppliers with a challenging problem. These companies were hitting target 2.5GHz performance goals on their (N10 or N7) application processors, but getting about 10% lower yield than expected, which they attributed to performance failures.… Read More
EDA and Semiconductor — Is There Growth In The Ecosystem?
The semiconductor industry has gone through several major transitions driven by different dynamics such as shift in business models (fab-centric to fab-less), product segmentation (system design house, IP developers) and end market applications (PC to cloud; and recently, to both automotive and Internet of Things — IOT’s,… Read More
Data Security – Why It Might Matter to Design and EDA
According to the Economist, “The world’s most valuable resource is no longer oil, but data”. Is this the case?Data is the by-product ofmany aspects of recent technology dynamics and is becoming the currency of today’s digital economy. All categories in Gartner’s Top10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2018 (Figure… Read More
Webinar: Multiphysics Reliability Signoff for Next-Generation Automotive Electronics Systems
In case you missed the TSMC event, ANSYS and TSMC are going to reprise a very important topic – signing-off reliability for ADAS and semi-autonomous /autonomous systems. This topic hasn’t had a lot of media attention amid the glamor and glitz of what might be possible in driverless cars. But it now seems like the cold light of real … Read More
Thermal Modeling for ADAS goes MultiPhysics
In electronic system design, we have grown comfortable with the idea that different regimes of analysis, such as the chip, the package and the system, or electrical, thermal and stress are more or less independent – what starts in one regime stays in that regime, give or take some margin information passed onto other regimes. And… Read More