Semiconductor capital expenditures (CapEx) are on track for strong growth in 2021. For many companies the increase should continue into 2022. TSMC, the dominant foundry company, expects to spend $30 billion in CapEx in 2021, a 74% increase from 2020. TSMC announced in March it plans to invest $100 billion over the next three years,… Read More




Optical I/O Solutions for Next-Generation Computing Systems
According to DARPA the fraction of total power consumed in semiconductors for I/O purposes as been growing rapidly and is creating an I/O power bottleneck. It has reached the point where it needs to be addressed with new technologies and approaches. Interestingly, while the energy density, as measured by pJ/bit for short reach… Read More
Memory Consistency Checks at RTL. Innovation in Verification
Multicore systems working with shared memory must support a well-defined model for consistency of thread accesses to that memory. There are multiple possible consistency models. Can a design team run memory consistency checks at RTL? Paul Cunningham (GM, Verification at Cadence), Raúl Camposano (Silicon Catalyst, entrepreneur,… Read More
Intel- Analysts/Investor flub shows disconnect on Intel, Industry & challenges
Analysts missed all warning signs until Intel spelled it out
12% stock drop shows disconnect and misunderstanding
No quick fix, this is a long term, uncertain problem & solution
Everyone ignored the obvious until it ran them over
A 12% stock drop is fault of investors/analysts not Intel
Whenever a stock drops 12% in one day there… Read More
Webinar: A Practical Approach to FinFET Layout Automation That Really Works
There are certain tasks that have been the holy grail of EDA for some time. A real silicon compiler – high level language as input and an optimal, correct layout as output is one. Fully automated analog design – objectives as input, optimal circuit as output is another. With the increased layout times, due to the ever-increasing design… Read More
Cadence Reveals Front-to-Back Safety
This is another level-up story, a direction I am finding increasingly appealing. This is when a critical supplier in the electronics value chain moves beyond islands of design automation to provide an integrated solution for the front-to-back design for capabilities now essential for automotive and industrial automation … Read More
Webinar – How to manage IP-XACT complexity in conjunction with RTL implementation flow
Standards help our EDA and IP industry grow more quickly and with less CAD integration efforts, and IP-XACT is another one of those Accellera standards (1685-2009) that is coming of age, and enabling IP reuse for SoC design teams. Here at SemiWik, we’ve been writing about Defacto Technologies and their prominent use of IP-XACT… Read More
Physically Aware SoC Assembly
We used to be comfortable with the idea that the worlds of logical design and physical implementation could be largely separated. Toss the logical design over the wall, and the synthesis and P&R teams would take care of the rest. That idea took a bit of a hit when we realized that synthesis had to become physically aware. The synthesis… Read More
The Challenge of Working with EUV Doses
Recently, a patent application from TSMC [1] revealed target EUV doses used in the range of 30-45 mJ/cm2. However, it was also acknowledged in the same application that such doses were too low to prevent defects and roughness. Recent studies [2,3] have shown that by considering photon density along with blur, the associated shot… Read More
Verification Completion: When is Enough Enough? Part II
Verification is a complex task that takes the majority of time and effort in chip design. At Veriest, as an ASIC services company, we have the opportunity to work on multiple projects and methodologies, interfacing with different experts.
In this “Verification Talks” series of articles, we aim to leverage this unique… Read More
Intel’s Pearl Harbor Moment