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Semiconductor Shortage – No Quick Fix – Years of neglect & financial hills to climb

Semiconductor Shortage – No Quick Fix – Years of neglect & financial hills to climb
by Robert Maire on 03-03-2021 at 8:00 am

Toamagachi Semiconductor shortage

– Semi Situation Stems from long term systemic neglect
– Will require much more than money & time than thought
– Fundamental change is needed to offset the financial bias
– Auto industry is just the hint of a much larger problem

Like recognizing global warming when the water is up to your neck

The problem… Read More


TECHTALK: Hierarchical PI Analysis of Large Designs with Voltus Solution

TECHTALK: Hierarchical PI Analysis of Large Designs with Voltus Solution
by Bernard Murphy on 03-03-2021 at 6:00 am

voltus min

Power integrity analysis in large chip designs is especially challenging thanks to the huge dynamic range the analysis must span. At one end, EM estimation and IR drop through interconnect and advanced transistor structures require circuit-level insight—very fine-grained insight but across a huge design. At the other, activity… Read More


USB4 Makes Interfacing Easy, But is Hard to Implement

USB4 Makes Interfacing Easy, But is Hard to Implement
by Tom Simon on 03-02-2021 at 10:00 am

USB4 Verification IP

USB made its big splash by unifying numerous connections into a single cable and interface. At the time there were keyboard ports, mouse ports, printer ports and many others. Over the years USB has delivered improved performance and greater functionality. However, as serial interfaces became more popular and started being used… Read More


Features of Resistive RAM Compute-in-Memory Macros

Features of Resistive RAM Compute-in-Memory Macros
by Tom Dillinger on 03-02-2021 at 8:00 am

V bitline

Resistive RAM (ReRAM) technology has emerged as an attractive alternative to embedded flash memory storage at advanced nodes.  Indeed, multiple foundries are offering ReRAM IP arrays at 40nm nodes, and below.

ReRAM has very attractive characteristics, with one significant limitation:

  • nonvolatile
  • long retention time
  • extremely
Read More

It’s Energy vs. Power that Matters

It’s Energy vs. Power that Matters
by Lauri Koskinen on 03-02-2021 at 6:00 am

Lauri at the white board

In tiny devices, such as true wireless headphones, the battery life of the device is usually determined by the chips that execute the device’s functions. Professor Jan Rabaey of UC Berkeley, who wrote the book on low power, also coined the term “energy frugal” a number of years ago, and this term is even more valid today with the proliferation… Read More


Webinar: Achronix and Vorago Deliver Innovation to Address Rad-Hard and Trusted SoC Design

Webinar: Achronix and Vorago Deliver Innovation to Address Rad-Hard and Trusted SoC Design
by Mike Gianfagna on 03-01-2021 at 10:00 am

Webinar Achronix and Vorago Deliver Innovation to Address Rad Hard and Trusted SoC Design FINAL

Radiation hardening is admittedly not a challenge every SoC design team faces. Methods to address this challenge typically involve a new process technology, a new library or both. Trusted, secure design is something more design teams worry about and that number is growing as our interconnected world creates new and significant… Read More


TSMC ISSCC 2021 Keynote Discussion

TSMC ISSCC 2021 Keynote Discussion
by Daniel Nenni on 03-01-2021 at 6:00 am

Mark Liu TSMC ISSCC 2021

Now that semiconductor conferences are virtual there are better speakers since they can prerecord and we have the extra time to do a better job of coverage. Even when conferences go live again I think they will also be virtual (hybrid) so our in depth coverage will continue.

ISSCC is one of the conferences we covered live since it’s… Read More


The Chip Market / China Conundrum

The Chip Market / China Conundrum
by Malcolm Penn on 02-28-2021 at 2:00 pm

China Taiwan Chip Dilema

In its February 20, 2021 edition, the Economist published an article entitled “How to kill a democracy; China faces fateful choices, especially involving Taiwan”.  It went on to quote “To many Chinese, the island’s conquest is a sacred national mission” as well as a by-line “America is losing its ability to deter a Chinese attack… Read More


Accelerating AI-Defined Cars

Accelerating AI-Defined Cars
by Manouchehr Rafie on 02-28-2021 at 10:00 am

Accelerating AI Defined Cars Figs

Convergence of Edge Computing, Machine Vision and 5G-Connected Vehicles

Today’s societies are becoming ever more multimedia-centric, data-dependent, and automated. Autonomous systems are hitting our roads, oceans, and air space. Automation, analysis, and intelligence is moving beyond humans to “machine-specific” … Read More


The Quest for Bugs: Dilemmas of Hardware Verification

The Quest for Bugs: Dilemmas of Hardware Verification
by Bryan Dickman on 02-28-2021 at 6:00 am

The Quest for Bugs Dilemmas of Hardware Verfication

Functional Verification for complex ASICs or IP-Core products is a resource limited ‘quest’ to find as many bugs as possible before tape-out or release. It can be a long, difficult and costly search that is constrained by cost, time and quality. The search space is practically infinite, and 100% exhaustive verification is an unrealisticRead More