For the past few decades, System-on-Chip (SoC) has been the gold standard for optimizing the performance and cost of electronic systems. Pulling together practically all of a smartphone’s digital and analog capabilities into a monolithic chip, the mobile application processor serves as a near-perfect example of an SoC. But… Read More
Typically, there is an existential rift between the on-chip access requirements for test and the need for security in SoCs. Using traditional deterministic scan techniques has meant opening up full read and write access to the flops in a design through the scan chains. Having this kind of access easily defeats the best designed… Read More
According to the ESD Alliance, the single biggest revenue category in our industry is for semiconductor IP, so the concept of IP reuse is firmly established as a way to get complex products to market more quickly and reducing risk. On the flip side, with hundreds or even thousands of IP blocks in a complex SoC, how does a team, division… Read More
The success of modern battery-powered products depends as much on useful operating time between charges as on functionality. FinFET process technologies overtook earlier planar CMOS in part because they significantly reduce leakage power. But they exacerbate dynamic power consumption thanks to increased pin capacitances.… Read More
Lauro Rizzatti recently interviewed Jean-Marie Brunet, vice president of product management and product engineering in the Scalable Verification Solution division at Siemens EDA, about why hardware-assisted verification is a must have for today’s semiconductor designs. A condensed version of their discussion is below.… Read More
We have all heard of many advanced technological inventions and products from the defense sector that subsequently got commercialized. While most of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) projects are classified secrets, many military innovations have had great influence in the commercial sector in the fields… Read More
While the trend towards System-on-Chip (SoC) has been gathering momentum for quite some time, the primary driver has been integration of digital components, spurred by Moore’s law. Integrating more and more digital circuitry into a single chip has been consistently beneficial for performance, power, form factor and economic… Read More
I’ve written before about Pulsic’s Animate Preview software, which is extremely helpful in completing placement in analog blocks so that they are ready for routing. Analog design automation has always been a tough proposition, but Animate Preview looks like a promising tool, with practical benefits. Obtaining DRC clean placement… Read More
In today’s System-on-Chip (SOC), analog blocks are used in many places such as I/O cells for communication, PLLs for generating clocks, LDO’s for converting supply voltage to internal rail voltage, Sensors for qualifying external characteristics such as temperature, light, motion, etc. However new advanced designs now require… Read More
When we think about Compute and AI SoCs, we often focus on the huge numbers of calculations being carried out every second, and the ingenious IPs that are able to reach such high levels of performance. However, there also exists a significant challenge in keeping the vast quantities of data flowing around the chip which is solved … Read More
