Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) are becoming more and more commonplace in our world. We have Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant that understand our voice commands. Vision systems that recognize objects are used for facial recognition, autonomous driving, medical, geographical and many other applications.… Read More
WEBINAR: Revolutionizing Electrical Verification in IC DesignIn the complex world of IC design, electrical…Read More
Silicon Catalyst on the Road to $1 Trillion IndustryThere were quite a few announcements at the…Read More
Hierarchically defining bump and pin regions overcomes 3D IC complexityBy Todd Burkholder and Per Viklund, Siemens EDA…Read More
CDC Verification for Safety-Critical Designs – What You Need to KnowVerification is always a top priority for any…Read More
Ceva Unleashes Wi-Fi 7 Pulse: Awakening Instant AI Brains in IoT and Physical RobotsIn the rapidly evolving landscape of connected devices,…Read MoreImec Technology Forum and ASML
On Thursday July 9 Imec held a virtual technology forum. Imec is one of the premier research organizations working on semiconductor technology and their forums are always interesting. My area of interest is process technology and the following are my observation in that area from the forum.
Luc Van Den Hove
Luc Van Den Hove is the… Read More
Designing AI Accelerators with Innovative FinFET and FD-SOI Solutions
I had the pleasure of spending time with Hiren Majmudar in preparation for the upcoming AI Accelerators webinar. As far as webinars go this will be one of the better ones we have done. Hiren has deep experience in both semiconductors and EDA during his lengthy career at Intel and now with a pure play foundry. He is intelligent, personable,… Read More
DAC Panel: Cadence Weighs in on AI for EDA, What Applications, Where’s the Data?
DAC was full of great panels, research papers and chip design stories this year, the same as other years. Being a virtual show, there were some differences of course. I’ve heard attendance was way up, allowing a lot more folks to experience the technical program. This is likely to be true for a virtual event. I’m sure we’ll see more… Read More
#57DAC – Panel Discussion of High Level Synthesis
Presenters took a trip down memory lane at DAC this year by having a panel discussion on HLS (High Level Synthesis) spanning from 1974 to 2020, and that time period aligns with when I first graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1978, starting chip design at Intel, then later transitioning into EDA companies by 1986. Marilyn… Read More
Low Power and RISC-V Talks at DAC2020, Hosted by Mentor
I’m going to get to low power and RISC-V, but first I’m trying out virtual DAC this year. Seems to be working smoothly, aside from some glitches in registration. But maybe that’s just me – I switched email addresses in the middle of the process. Some sessions are live, many pre-recorded, not quite the same interactive experience… Read More
A SoC Design Flow With IP-XACT
Taping out a SoC is never easy. The physical dimensions of the chip often belie the work which has been done to get to the tapeout stage. And it is still not a done deal as the hardware and software development teams await the arrival of the test chip from the foundry to complete the post silicon bring-up and validation. The pressure on… Read More
Synopsys Webinar: A Comprehensive Overview of High-Speed Data Center Communications
High-speed communication is a critical component for many applications, most notably in the data center. The serializer/deserializer physical interface, or SerDes PHY is the backbone of many different forms of high-speed communication for this application. Use cases include on chip, between chips, between boards and racks… Read More
VLSI Symposium 2020 – Imec Buried Power Rail
The 2020 VLSI Technology Symposium was held as a virtual conference from June 14th through June 19th. At the symposium Imec gave an interesting paper on Buried Power Rails (BPR) and I had a chance to interview one of the authors, Anshul Gupta.
As logic devices continue to scale down metal pitch is reaching a limit. Imec defines a pitch… Read More
The 10 Worst Cybersecurity Strategies
Counting down to the absolutely worst cybersecurity strategies. Sadly, these are all prevalent in the industry. Many organizations have failed spectacularly simply because they chose to follow a long-term path that leads to disaster. You know who you are…
Let’s count them down.
10. Cyber-Insurance
No need for security, … Read More


An Insight into Building Quantum Computers