The “in-person” portion of the Design Automation Conference (DAC) was recently held in San Francisco. (As several presenters were unable to attend, a “virtual” program is also available.) The presentations spanned a wide gamut – e.g., technical advanced in design automation algorithms; new features in commercial EDA tools; … Read More
Semicon West is Semicon Less
- Semicon West was Semicon Less- Less Customers & Vendor
- Everyone is busy as can be, maybe too busy to attend
- Those who were there, talk about supply chain issues & stress
- How long does the party last & where the money comes from?
Semicon West was Semicon Less….
We attended a “Hybrid” version of Semicon… Read More
DAC 2021 – Accellera Panel all about Functional Safety Standards
Functional safety has been at the forefront of the electrification of our vehicles with new ADAS features, and the push to reach autonomous driving, while having compliance with the ISO 26262 functional safety standard. I attended the Accellera hosted panel discussion on Monday at DAC, hearing from functional safety panelists… Read More
Intel Discusses Scaling Innovations at IEDM
Standard Cell Scaling
Complex logic designs are built up from standard cells, in order to continue to scale logic we need to continually shrink the size of standard cells.
Figure 1 illustrates the dimensions of a standard cell.
Figure 1. Standard Cell Dimensions.
From figure 1 we can see that shrinking standard cell sizes requires… Read More
DAC 2021 – Joe Sawicki explains Digitalization
Monday at DAC this year started off on a very optimistic note as Joe Sawicki from Siemens EDA presented in the Pavilion on the topic of Digitalization, a frequent theme in the popular press because of the whole Work From Home transition that we’ve gone through during the pandemic. Several industries are benefiting from the… Read More
A Practical Approach to Better Thermal Analysis for Chip and Package
Thermal modeling has become a hot topic for designers of today’s high-speed circuits and complex packages. This has led to the adoption of better and more sophisticated thermal modeling tools and flows as exemplified in this presentation by Micron at the IDEAS Digital Forum. The presentation is titled “Thermal Aware Memory Controller… Read More
Performance, Power and Area (PPA) Benefits Through Intelligent Clock Networks
One of the sessions at the Linley Fall Processor Conference 2021 was the SoC Design session. With a horizontal focus, it included presentations of interest to a variety of different market applications. The talk by Mo Faisal, CEO of Movellus, caught my attention as it promises to solve a chronic issue relating to synchronizing … Read More
Ansys CEO Ajei Gopal’s Keynote on 3D-IC at Samsung SAFE Forum
System on chip (SoC) based design has long been recognized as a powerful method to offer product differentiation through higher performance and expanded functionality. Yet, it comes with a number of limitations, such as high cost of development. Also, SoCs are monolithic, which can inhibit rapid adaptation in the face of changing… Read More
Webinar on Dealing with the Pain Points of AI/ML Hardware
Ever increasing data handling demands make creating hardware for many applications extremely difficult. In an upcoming webinar Achronix, a leading supplier of FPGA’s, talks about the data handling requirements for AI/ML applications – which are growing at perhaps one of the highest rates of all. Just looking at all data… Read More
Live 58th Design Automation Conference Coverage!
My beautiful first mate and I will be together at DAC this year. Her first DAC was 1985 in Las Vegas and we lived happily ever after. SemiWiki bloggers Tom Dillinger and Daniel Payne will also be at DAC attending sessions and meeting with exhibiting companies to learn and blog about the latest innovations inside the semiconductor … Read More


ASML High-NA EUV is Not Ready for High-Volume Production