Intel & Ansys Enable 14nm Chip Production

Intel & Ansys Enable 14nm Chip Production
by Pawan Fangaria on 06-20-2014 at 10:00 am

In the semiconductor industry, it feels great to hear about the process technology shrinking to lower nodes along with innovative transistor structures that offer major gains in PPA (Power, Performance and Area). However, it requires huge investment of capital, time and effort from foundries to conceptualize, prototype and… Read More


Fast & Accurate Thermal Analysis of 3D-ICs

Fast & Accurate Thermal Analysis of 3D-ICs
by Pawan Fangaria on 04-14-2014 at 11:00 am

As Moore’s law started saturating on a single semiconductor die, the semiconductor community came up with the approach of growing vertically by stacking dies one above other in a 3D-IC arrangement. However, a major concern with a 3D-IC is that the heat generated by each die can get trapped in the stack, and hence it’s extremely important… Read More


Xilinx & Apache Team up for FPGA Reliability at 20nm

Xilinx & Apache Team up for FPGA Reliability at 20nm
by Pawan Fangaria on 03-17-2014 at 12:00 am

In this age of SoCs with hundreds of IPs from different sources integrated together and working at high operating frequencies, FPGA designers are hard pressed keeping up the chip reliability from issues arising out of excessive static & dynamic IR drop, power & ground noise, electro migration and so on. While the IPs are… Read More


Full Chip ESD Sign-off – Necessary

Full Chip ESD Sign-off – Necessary
by Pawan Fangaria on 11-13-2013 at 7:00 pm

As Moore’s law keeps going, semiconductor design density on a chip keeps increasing. The real concern today is that the shrinkage in technology node has rendered the small wire geometry and gate oxide thickness (although fine in all other perspectives) extremely vulnerable to ESD (Electrostatic Discharge) effects. More than… Read More


Reliability sign-off has several aspects – One Solution

Reliability sign-off has several aspects – One Solution
by Pawan Fangaria on 09-01-2013 at 5:00 pm

Here, I am talking about reliability of chip design in the context of electrical effects, not external factors like cosmic rays. So, the electrical factors that could affect reliability of chips could be excessive power dissipation, noise, EM (Electromigration), ESD (Electrostatic Discharge), substrate noise coupling and… Read More


Robust Design <- Robust Flow <- Robust Tools

Robust Design <- Robust Flow <- Robust Tools
by Pawan Fangaria on 08-10-2013 at 6:00 pm

I could have written the sequence of the title in reverse order, but no, design is the one which initiates the need of a particular flow and the flow needs support of EDA tools to satisfy that need. It’s okay if the design is small; some manual procedures and workarounds/scripts may be able to perform certain jobs. However, as the design… Read More


Power and Reliability Sign-off – A must, but how?

Power and Reliability Sign-off – A must, but how?
by Pawan Fangaria on 07-29-2013 at 11:00 am

At the onset of SoCs with multiple functionalities being packed together at the helm of technologies to improve upon performance and area; power, which was earlier neglected, has become critical and needs special attention in designing SoCs. And there comes reliability considerations as well due to multiple electrical and … Read More


Today’s Program is Brought To You by the Letter A

Today’s Program is Brought To You by the Letter A
by Paul McLellan on 06-28-2013 at 9:09 pm

What do nVidia, Freescale and GlobalFoundries have in common? They are semiconductor companies? They are ARM licensees? They are doing 28nm chips? They all have the letter ‘a’ in their names?

All true, but that’s not what I was thinking of. But the letter ‘a’ is a clue since Apache (and Ansys) begin with ‘a’. All three companies have… Read More


Webinar: IP integration methodology

Webinar: IP integration methodology
by Paul McLellan on 07-17-2011 at 12:24 pm

The next Apache webinar is coming up on 21st July at 11am Pacific time on “IP integration methodology”.

This webinar will be conducted by Arvind Shanmugavel, Director Applications Engineering at Apache Design Solutions. Mr. Shanmugavel has been with Apache since 2007, supporting the RedHawk and Totem product … Read More