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Webinar on Tools and Solutions for Analog IP Migration

Webinar on Tools and Solutions for Analog IP Migration
by Tom Simon on 03-17-2020 at 10:00 am

MunEDA flow for analog design porting

The commonly advanced reason for IP reuse is lower cost and shorter development time. However, IP reuse presents its own challenges, especially for analog designs. In the case of digital designs, once a new standard cell library is available, it is usually not too hard to resynthesize RTL to create new working silicon. For analog… Read More


Innovation in Verification March 2020

Innovation in Verification March 2020
by Bernard Murphy on 03-17-2020 at 6:00 am

Innovation

This blog is the next in a series in which Paul Cunningham (GM of the Verification Group at Cadence), Jim Hogan and I pick a paper on a novel idea we appreciated and suggest opportunities to further build on that idea.

We welcome comments on our blogs and suggestions for new topics if they’re based on published work.

The Innovation

Our… Read More


5G SoCs Demand New Verification Approaches

5G SoCs Demand New Verification Approaches
by Mike Gianfagna on 03-16-2020 at 10:00 am

Simplified 4G network

Lately, I’ve been cataloging the number of impossible-to-verify technologies we face. All forms of machine learning and inference applications fall into this category. I’ve yet to see a regression test to prove a chip for an autonomous driving system will do the right thing in all cases. Training data bias is another interesting… Read More


Will the Q1 Haircut become Covid-19 Crew Cut in Q2?

Will the Q1 Haircut become Covid-19 Crew Cut in Q2?
by Robert Maire on 03-16-2020 at 5:00 am

Corvid 19 Crew Cut Semiwiki
  • Corona impact growing exponentially in chip food chain
  • YMTC in Wuhan may be “patient zero”
  • Q1 revenue haircuts may turn into Q2 crewcuts
  • Working from home really doesn’t work

When does a haircut become a crew cut in revenues?
All the major semiconductor equipment makers took a significant haircut to their Q1… Read More


The Need for Low Pupil Fill in EUV Lithography

The Need for Low Pupil Fill in EUV Lithography
by Fred Chen on 03-15-2020 at 10:00 am

The Need for Low Pupil Fill in EUV Lithography 1

Extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography targets sub-20 nm resolution using a wavelength range of ~13.3-13.7 nm (with some light including DUV outside this band as well) and a reflective ring-field optics system. ASML has been refining the EUV tool platform, starting with the NXE:3300B, the very first platform with a numerical

Read More

There is No Easy Fix to AI Privacy Problems

There is No Easy Fix to AI Privacy Problems
by Matthew Rosenquist on 03-14-2020 at 8:00 am

There is No Easy Fix to AI Privacy Problems

Artificial intelligence – more specifically, the machine learning (ML) subset of AI – has a number of privacy problems.

Not only does ML require vast amounts of data for the training process, but the derived system is also provided with access to even greater volumes of data as part of the inference processing while in operation. … Read More


SPIE 2020 – Applied Materials Material-Enabled Patterning

SPIE 2020 – Applied Materials Material-Enabled Patterning
by Scotten Jones on 03-13-2020 at 10:00 am

2020 SPIE Media Briefing Full Slides for Scott Jones Page 16

I wasn’t able to attend the SPIE Advanced Lithography Conference this year for personal reasons, but Applied Materials was kind enough to set up a phone briefing for me with Regina Freed to discuss their Materials-Enabled Patterning announcement.

At IEDM Applied Materials (AMAT) tried to put together a panel across the entire… Read More


Why IP Designers Don’t Like Surprises!

Why IP Designers Don’t Like Surprises!
by Daniel Nenni on 03-13-2020 at 6:00 am

IPDelta SemiWiki

If it’s your job to get a SoC design through synthesis, timing/power closure and final verification, the last thing you need are surprises in new versions of the IP blocks that are integrated into the design. If your IP supplier sends a new version, the best possible scenario is that this is only a small incremental change from… Read More


The Story of Ultra-WideBand – Part 4: Short latency is king

The Story of Ultra-WideBand – Part 4: Short latency is king
by Frederic Nabki & Dominic Deslandes on 03-12-2020 at 10:00 am

The Story of Ultra WideBand Part 4

How Ultra-wideband aligns with 5G’s premise

In part 3, we discussed the time-frequency duality or how time and bandwidth are interchangeable. If one wants to compress in time a wireless transmission, more frequency bandwidth is needed. This property can be used to increase the accuracy of ranging, as we saw in part 3. Another very… Read More


Turbo-Charge Your Next PCIe SoC with PLDA Switch IP

Turbo-Charge Your Next PCIe SoC with PLDA Switch IP
by Mike Gianfagna on 03-12-2020 at 6:00 am

Integrated NVMe interfaces

SemiWiki has a new IP partner, PLDA and they bring a lot to the party.  Peripheral component interconnect express (PCIe) is a popular high-performance data interface standard. Think GPUs, RAID cards, WiFi cards or solid-state disk (SSD) drives connected to a motherboard. The protocol offers much higher throughput than previous… Read More