A couple of folks have asked me to write on nuclear power. Nuclear offers additional sources for power generation, a pressing concern thanks to demand from giant data centers. Also, investment by Microsoft, Sam Altman and others signals their urgency to accelerate past slow moving utilities plans. I have some background in this… Read More
Artificial Intelligence
Synopsys Advances Hardware Assisted Verification for the AI Era
At the 2026 Synopsys Converge Event, Synopsys announced a broad set of new products and platform upgrades, with its hardware-assisted verification (HAV) announcement emerging as a key highlight within that lineup. A key aspect of this announcement was moving beyond a hardware centric model to a more scalable, programmable … Read More
Securing UALink in AI clusters with UALinkSec-compliant IP
A classic networking problem is securing connections with encrypted data, but implementing strong encryption algorithms at wire speeds can limit performance. However, introducing blazing-fast connectivity without an encryption strategy leaves systems vulnerable. The architects in the UALink Consortium, including … Read More
Trust in Verification with AI
These are stressful times in functional verification. We are being pushed to more aggressively embrace AI-based automation, knowing we will continue to be held accountable for quality of results. Verification misses could upend careers, maybe enterprises. It is tempting to believe that sanity will prevail and we will ultimately… Read More
Podcast EP336: How Quadric is Enabling Dramatic Improvements in Edge AI with Veer Kheterpal
Daniel is joined by Dr. Veer Kheterpal. Veer has founded three technology companies and possesses full-stack expertise spanning software to silicon across edge and datacenter applications. Currently, he is the CEO & co-founder of Quadric, a semiconductor IP licensing company that delivers the blueprints for efficient,… Read More
WEBINAR: HBM4E Advances Bandwidth Performance for AI Training
The rapid proliferation of LLMs and other AI applications, and of high-end GPU platforms that run them, is putting intense pressure on the performance requirements for memory technologies. Designers need to be keenly aware of how to make the most of their memory and controller choices, which can be moving targets given the rapid… Read More
Siemens Fuse EDA AI Agent Releases to Orchestrate Agentic Semiconductor and PCB Design
Though terminology sometimes get fuzzy, consensus holds that an agent manages a bounded task with control through a natural language interface. An agentic orchestrator, itself an agent, manages a more complex objective requiring reasoning through multi-step actions and is responsible for orchestrating those actions. By… Read More
Breker Hosts an Energetic Panel on Spec-Driven Verification
I was fortunate to be asked to moderate an evening panel adjacent to the first day of DVCon 2026, on AI-Driven SoC Verification starting from specs. You know my skepticism on panels, finding they rarely generate insights or controversy. This panel was quite different. Panelists were Shelley Henry (CEO, Moores Lab AI), Adnan Hamid… Read More
Synopsys Explores AI/ML Impact on Mask Synthesis at SPIE 2026
The SPIE Advanced Lithography + Patterning Symposium recently concluded. This is a popular event where leading researchers gather. Challenges such as optical and EUV lithography, patterning technologies, metrology, and process integration for semiconductor manufacturing and adjacent applications are all covered. This… Read More
The Next Hurdle AI Systems Must Clear
AI isn’t having an easy ride. The media and Wall Street swing wildly between extremes on any hint of a shift in AI sentiment. Dickens saw this coming: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of … Read More


Silicon Insurance: Why eFPGA is Cheaper Than a Respin — and Why It Matters in the Intel 18A Era