I had the opportunity to preview an upcoming SemiWiki webinar on IR drop and power integrity. These topics, all by themselves, have real stopping power. Almost everyone I speak with has a story to tell about these issues in a recent chip design project. When you combine hot topics like this with a presentation that details the collaboration… Read More
Reliability Challenges in Advanced Packages and Boards
Today’s Market Requirements
Complex electronic devices and (sub)systems work for us in important applications, such as aircrafts, trains, trucks, passenger vehicles as well as building infrastructure, manufacturing equipment, medical systems and more. Very high reliability (the ability of a product to meet all requirements… Read More
Thermal Issues and Solutions for 3D ICs: Latest Updates and Future Prospect
At DesignCon 2020, ANSYS held a series of sponsored presentations. I was able to attend a couple of them. These were excellent events with the material delivered by talented and high-energy speakers. The DesignCon technical program has many dimensions beyond the conference tracks. One of the presentations dealt with 3D ICs.… Read More
Thermal Reliability Challenges in Automotive and Data Center Applications – A Xilinx Perspective
I wrote recently on ANSYS and TSMC’s joint work on thermal reliability workflows, as these become much more important in advanced processes and packaging. Xilinx provided their own perspective on thermal reliability analysis for their unquestionably large systems – SoC, memory, SERDES and high-speed I/O – stacked within a … Read More
De-Risking High-Speed RF Designs from Electromagnetic Crosstalk Issue
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
Emerging Requirements for Electromagnetic Crosstalk Analysis
This article will describe the motivations for pursuing a new flow in the SoC design methodology. This flow involves the extraction, evaluation, and analysis of a full electromagnetic coupling model for a complex SoC and its package environment. The results of this analysis highlight the impact of electromagnetic coupling… Read More
ANSYS, TSMC Document Thermal Reliability Guidelines
Advanced IC technologies, 5nm and 7nm FinFET design and stacked packaging, are enabling massive levels of integration of super-fast circuits. These in turn enable much of the exciting new technology we hear so much about: mobile gaming and ultra-high definition mobile video through enhanced mobile broadband in 5G, which requires… Read More
Package Reliability Issues Cost Money
Advanced packaging technology is enabling “More Than Moore” scaling of heterogeneous technology die. At the recent EDPS Symposium in Milpitas, Craig Hillman, Director of Product Development, DfR Solutions, at ANSYS gave a compelling presentation, “Reliability Challenges in Advanced Packaging”. The key takeaway messages… Read More
5G Deployments – The Analysis Requirements are Ginormous
The introduction of 5G communications support offers tremendous potential across a broad spectrum of applications (no pun intended). 5G is indeed quite encompassing, across a wide range of frequencies – the figure below illustrates the common terminology used, from low-band, mid-band (“sub 6G”), and high-band (“mmWave”)… Read More
Xilinx on ANSYS Elastic Compute for Timing and EM/IR
I’m a fan of getting customer reality checks on advanced design technologies. This is not so much because vendors put the best possible spin on their product capabilities; of course they do (within reason), as does every other company aiming to stay in business. But application by customers on real designs often shows lower performance,… Read More
Podcast EP4: Can China Really Become Self-Sufficient in Semiconductors?