DAC 2021 – Accellera Panel all about Functional Safety Standards

DAC 2021 – Accellera Panel all about Functional Safety Standards
by Daniel Payne on 12-14-2021 at 10:00 am

FS data format min

Functional safety has been at the forefront of the electrification of our vehicles with new ADAS features, and the push to reach autonomous driving, while having compliance with the ISO 26262 functional safety standard. I attended the Accellera hosted panel discussion on Monday at DAC, hearing from functional safety panelists… Read More


Traceability and ISO 26262

Traceability and ISO 26262
by Bernard Murphy on 11-24-2021 at 6:00 am

V graphic 2 min

Since traceability and its relationship to ISO 26262 may be an unfamiliar topic for many of my readers, I thought it might be useful to spend some time on why this area is important. What is the motivation behind a need for traceability in support of automotive systems development? The classic verification and validation V-diagram… Read More


Synopsys’ ARC® DSP IP for Low-Power Embedded Applications

Synopsys’ ARC® DSP IP for Low-Power Embedded Applications
by Kalar Rajendiran on 09-30-2021 at 10:00 am

Key Applications Driving PPA Optimized Signal Processing

On Sep 20th, Synopsys announced an expansion of its DesignWare® ARC® Processor IP portfolio with new 128-bit ARC VPX2 and 256-bit ARC VPX3 DSP Processors targeting low-power embedded SoCs. In 2019, the company had launched a 512-bit ARC VPX5 DSP processor for high-performance signal processing SoCs. Due to the length, format… Read More


More Tales from the NoC Trenches

More Tales from the NoC Trenches
by Bernard Murphy on 09-23-2021 at 6:00 am

Galileo min

Science texts like to present the evolution of knowledge as step-function transitions, from ignorance to wisdom. We used to think the sun revolved around the earth. Then Galileo appeared, and we instantly realized that the earth revolves around the sun. But reality is always messier, as Galileo understood all too well. The transition… Read More


Reliability Analysis for Mission-Critical IC design

Reliability Analysis for Mission-Critical IC design
by Daniel Payne on 09-13-2021 at 10:00 am

reliability analysis min

Mission-critical IC design for segments like automotive, aerospace, defense, medical and 5G have more stringent reliability analysis requirements than consumer electronics, and entails running special simulations for the following concerns:

  • Electromigration analysis
  • IR drop analysis
  • MOS aging
  • High-sigma Monte Carlo
Read More

TSMC Wafer Wars! Intel versus Apple!

TSMC Wafer Wars! Intel versus Apple!
by Daniel Nenni on 08-18-2021 at 10:00 am

Intel TSMC SemiWiki

The big fake news last week came from a report out of China stating that TSMC won a big Intel order for 3nm wafers. We have been talking about this for some time on SemiWiki so this is nothing new. Unfortunately, the article mentioned wafer and delivery date estimates that are unconfirmed and from what I know, completely out of line. … Read More


SoC Vulnerabilities

SoC Vulnerabilities
by Daniel Payne on 07-29-2021 at 6:00 am

side channel attack

As I read both the popular and technical press each week I often see articles about computer systems being hacked, and here’s just a few vulnerabilities from this week:

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Automotive Safety Island: Test, Safety, Security, ISO 26262

Automotive Safety Island: Test, Safety, Security, ISO 26262
by Daniel Payne on 07-12-2021 at 10:00 am

functional safety

I first fell in love with electric vehicles back in 1978 as an Electrical Engineering student, studying at the University of Minnesota. What caught my fancy was a small advertisement listed in the back of Popular Mechanics magazine to build your own electric vehicle by replacing the gas engine of a Honda with an electric motor, so… Read More


Safety + Security for Automotive SoCs with ASIL B Compliant tRoot HSMs

Safety + Security for Automotive SoCs with ASIL B Compliant tRoot HSMs
by Kalar Rajendiran on 06-30-2021 at 10:00 am

New Architectures Reshaping Auto SoCs

Automotive segment is a market that has historically been supported by a few select suppliers within the semiconductor ecosystem. Over the last decade, this market has transitioned from just being about reliability, performance, fuel efficiency, etc., to placing equal importance to user experience. This user experience … Read More


Connecting System Design to the Enterprise

Connecting System Design to the Enterprise
by Bernard Murphy on 06-16-2021 at 6:00 am

Connecting System Design to the Enterprise min

While systems design underpins the explosion in “smart everything”, it remains somewhat isolated from another explosion—the proliferation of tools for application lifecycle management (ALM). ALM tools are prevalent on the web, in the cloud and on our phones, to streamline product design and build, to track correspondence… Read More