I will address this topic with two blog posts: validation (i.e. post silicon) — Part 1, and verification (pre-silicon) — Part 2 (coming soon!). In this blog post, I will focus on validation.
One of the upsides of using catalog chips that have been in the market for a long time and have ramped in substantial volumes is that… Read More
This week, we are continuing our discussion of various topics that Semitracks addresses in their training activities. One area that they focus on quite a bit is Semiconductor Reliability and Product Qualification.
One of the key activities that a Product Engineer will coordinate is the qualification of new products before they… Read More
High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) promises to do for electronic product design what high-rise buildings did for cities. Up until now, electronic circuits have suffered from the equivalent of suburban sprawl. HBM is a radical transformation of memory architecture that will have huge ripple effects on how SOC based electronics are … Read More
Next week there is a live seminar at the famed Computer Museum in Silicon Valley that you won’t want to miss. If you haven’t been to the Computer Museum here is what you are missing:… Read More
The design of parallel interfaces is supposed to be (comparatively) easy — e.g., follow a few printed circuit board routing guidelines; pay attention to data/clock/strobe signal lengths and shielding; ensure good current return paths (avoid discontinuities); match the terminating resistances to the PCB trace impedance;… Read More
In this era of high-performance, low-power, and low-cost devices coming up at an unprecedented scale, the SoCs can never attain the ultimate in performance; always there is scope for improvement. Several methods including innovative technology, multi-processor architecture, memory, data traffic management for low latency,… Read More
It was back in July of 2012 that the acquisition of Sigrity by Cadence was announced. Although Cadence is a dominant player in both IC and board layout tools, they did not have an electromagnetic (EM) signal integrity solution in their portfolio. This acquisition marks a turning point for the EM/SI sector – tight integration… Read More
With growing SoC size, complexity, software and hardware content in it and shrinking time-to-market, the SoC design completion in time has become increasingly dependent on IP which need to be sourced (internally or externally), customized according to the design need and integrated together into the SoC. While IP providers… Read More
In today’s electronics with multiple functions working together, heat generation is on the rise; sometimes it becomes intolerable. In fact components running at different temperatures can cause timing issues, and very high temperatures can lead to operational issues such as latch-up. An electronic system can contain chips,… Read More
3D-IC has a stack of dies connected and packaged together, and therefore needs new testing strategies other than testing a single die. It’s given that a single defective die can render the whole of 3D-IC unusable, so each die in the stack must be completely and perfectly tested before its entry into that stack. Looking at it from a … Read More
