Engineers love to optimize their designs, but that implies that there are models and stimulus to automate the process. Process engineers have TCAD tools, circuit designers have SPICE for circuit simulation, logic designers have gate-level simulators, RTL designers use logic simulation, but what is there for the system architects… Read More
Samtec Keynote – Power Integrity is the New Black Magic
The Signal Integrity Journal recently held a half day Electronic Systems SI/PI Forum that included presentations from industry leaders covering key design topics for signal integrity and power integrity engineers. The event was sponsored by Cadence. The keynote for the event was presented by Istvan Novak, principal signal… Read More
Adaptive Power/Performance Management for FD-SOI
A vexing chip design issue is how to achieve (or improve) performance and power dissipation targets, allowing for a wide range of manufacturing process variation (P) and dynamic operation voltage and temperature fluctuations (VT). One design method is to analyze the operation across a set of PVT corners, and ensure sufficient… Read More
Die-to-Die Interface PHY and Controller Subsystem for Next Generation Chiplets
In early April, Gabriele Saucier kicked off Design & Reuse’s IPSoC Silicon Valley 2021 Conference. IPSoC conference as the name suggests is dedicated to semiconductor intellectual property (IP) and IP-based electronic systems. There were a number of excellent presentations at the conference. The presentations had been… Read More
TSMC Ups CAPEX Again!
We were all pleasantly surprised when TSMC increased 2021 Capex to a record $28 billion. To me this validated the talk inside the ecosystem that Intel would be coming to TSMC at 3nm. We were again surprised when TSMC announced a $100B investment over the next three years which belittled Intel’s announcement that they would spend … Read More
Enabling Next Generation Silicon In Package Products
In early April, Gabriele Saucier kicked off Design & Reuse’s IPSoC Silicon Valley 2021 Conference. IPSoC conference as the name suggests is dedicated to semiconductor intellectual property (IP) and IP-based electronic systems. There were a number of excellent presentations at the conference. The presentations had been… Read More
SPIE 2021 – Applied Materials – DRAM Scaling
At the SPIE Advanced Lithography Conference in February 2021, Regina Freed of Applied Materials gave a paper: “Module-Level Material Engineering for Continued DRAM Scaling”. Applied Materials provided me with the presentation and was kind enough to set up an interview for me with Regina Freed.
I also spoke to Regina Freed last… Read More
Webinar: Annapurna Labs and Altair Team up for Rapid Chip Design in the Cloud
This is a story of strategic recursion. Yes, a fancy term. I just made up. If you’re not into algorithm development you can Google recursion, but the simple explanation is we’re talking about using the cloud to design the cloud. The story begins with Annapurna Labs, a fabless chip company focused on bringing innovation to cloud infrastructure,… Read More
AUGER, the First User Group Meeting for Agnisys
As a long-time member of the EDA community, I really believe in user groups. EDA tools are complicated beasts, with many options and different ways to use them, and they are constantly evolving. Users interact with their local field applications engineers (FAEs) and sometimes corporate AEs (product specialists) as well on a regular… Read More
WEBINAR: Pulsic’s Animate Makes Automated Analog Layout a Reality
Many years ago, digital and analog design flows diverged, with digital design benefiting from increasing levels of automation and more importantly separation between the front-end design process and the back-end design process. While digital design still requires linkages between the front and back end, they are well defined… Read More


TSMC Formally Sues Ex-SVP Over Alleged Transfer of Trade Secrets to Intel