SILVACO 051525 Webinar 800x100 v2

Free Webinar on Standard Cell Statistical Characterization

Free Webinar on Standard Cell Statistical Characterization
by admin on 02-20-2018 at 12:00 pm

Variation analysis continues to be increasingly important as process technology moves to more advanced nodes. It comes as no surprise that tool development in this area has been vigorous and aggressive. New higher reliability IC applications, larger memory sizes and much higher production volumes require sophisticated yield… Read More


Securing embedded SIMs

Securing embedded SIMs
by Bernard Murphy on 02-20-2018 at 6:00 am

If you have a phone, you probably know it has a SIM card, for most of us the anchor that ties us into a 2/3-year plan with one network provider, unless you have an unlocked phone. Even then, you have to mess around swapping SIM cards if you travel overseas. Wouldn’t it be nice if the SIM was embedded and could be switched though an app or an… Read More


IPC-2581: The Standard for PCB Data Exchange

IPC-2581: The Standard for PCB Data Exchange
by Tom Dillinger on 02-19-2018 at 12:00 pm

The motivations to establish an industry standard data format are varied:

[LIST=1]

  • solidify a “de facto” standard, transitioning its evolution and support from a single company to an industry consortium;
  • aggregate disparate sources of design and manufacturing data into a single representation, with documented semantics;
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DVCon 2018 Mentor Graphics and SemiWiki

DVCon 2018 Mentor Graphics and SemiWiki
by Daniel Nenni on 02-19-2018 at 7:00 am

DVCon turns 30 this year which is a very big deal. My oldest child also turns 30 this year which really puts things in perspective looking back at what we have all accomplished during that time. DVCon originally started as a user’s group at the 1988 Design Automation Conference in Anaheim California and the rest as they say is history.… Read More


Blackberry Reboot Nears Completion

Blackberry Reboot Nears Completion
by Roger C. Lanctot on 02-18-2018 at 12:00 pm

Jalopnik’s report that car maker Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) had experienced a failed software update that had thrown the infotainment systems in some MY 2017-18 vehicles into a never-ending cycle of rebooting was a reminder that cars are indeed becoming smartphones on wheels. Blackberry CEO John Chen has no doubtsRead More


8 Trends of IoT in 2018

8 Trends of IoT in 2018
by Ahmed Banafa on 02-18-2018 at 7:00 am

The Internet of things (IoT) is growing rapidly and 2018 will be a fascinating year for the IoT industry. IoT technology continues to evolve at an incredibly rapid pace. Consumers and businesses alike are anticipating the next big innovation. They are all set to embrace the ground-breaking impact of the Internet of Things on ourRead More


What does a Deep Learning Chip Look Like

What does a Deep Learning Chip Look Like
by Daniel Nenni on 02-16-2018 at 12:00 pm

There’s been a lot of discussion of late about deep learning technology and its impact on many markets and products. A lot of the technology under discussion is basically hardware implementations of neural networks, a concept that’s been around for a while.

What’s new is the compute power that advanced semiconductor technology… Read More


Why It’s A Good Idea to Embed PVT Monitoring IP in SoCs

Why It’s A Good Idea to Embed PVT Monitoring IP in SoCs
by Daniel Payne on 02-16-2018 at 7:00 am

At Intel back in the late 1970’s we wanted to know what process corner each DRAM chip and wafer was trending at so we included a handful of test transistors in the scribe lines between the active die. Having test transistors meant that we could do a quick electrical test at wafer probe time to measure the P and N channel transistor… Read More


SPI Inspires a New Generation of SOC Designs

SPI Inspires a New Generation of SOC Designs
by admin on 02-15-2018 at 12:00 pm

When I started dabbling in hardware again for fun using Arduinos about five years ago, it had been a long time since I had played with microprocessor chips. The epiphany for me was seeing how easy it was to load programs onto the onboard flash on something like an Atmel AVR using the SPI interface. My previous experience decades early… Read More


Webinar: Bottlenecks be Gone – Automated Performance Verification with Synopsys

Webinar: Bottlenecks be Gone – Automated Performance Verification with Synopsys
by Bernard Murphy on 02-14-2018 at 10:00 pm

Performance verification is among the most challenging of objectives in any SoC verification plan. It’s difficult to start effectively until quite late in the development cycle, at which point you don’t have a lot of time left to develop extensive performance-oriented testbenches. So many teams adapt functional tests to this… Read More