The Future of Chip Design

Paper Submitted by Bipul Talukdar, Director of Applications Engineering in North America, SmartDV   The future of chip design in a few short years could look entirely different as the semiconductor industry witnesses an advancing trend toward free and flexible, community-supported hardware designs for the long tail of new applications based on custom semiconductor devices. Anyone now can take advantage of open-source solutions to design their own CPU, custom accelerator or specialized processor, creating a semiconductor renaissance like no other the industry has seen before. In addition, availability of high-performance FPGAs with affordable, commercialized flows give boost to a low-budget, Read More

The Future of Chip Design2023-02-24T20:15:43-06:00

Open Source ASICs Take a Giant Leap Forward with the First Ever Open Foundry PDK

Paper Submitted by Ross Miller, Vice President of Strategic Marketing & Business Unit, SkyWater Technology and Mohamed Kassem, CTO & Co-Founder, Efabless   Wow, 2020 has been a year, hasn’t it? It is going to be remembered for lots of things, including this unprecedented pandemic. Although many industries have been negatively impacted, innovation continues. And, for a very select group, the list of things to remember will include a pivotal milestone for open source application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) design. In June of 2020, Google and SkyWater Technology collaborated to release the industry’s first open source foundry process design kit Read More

Open Source ASICs Take a Giant Leap Forward with the First Ever Open Foundry PDK2023-02-24T20:07:04-06:00

AI-powered, hardware-based preemptive security is a game changer

Paper Submitted by Gopi Sirineni, CEO of Axiado Corporation and Prakash Sangam, Founder and Principal of Tantra Analyst Cybercrime cost an estimated $6 Trillion[1] a year to the global economy. Everybody claims security is their top priority. But sadly, during product design and implementation tradeoffs, performance and other considerations take the front seat and security often becomes an afterthought, and in most cases, after-the-fact. Even when implemented properly, today’s security architecture is static and limited to individual components of the system, lacking a holistic, system-wide approach. scenario to be verified. This description includes the expected outcome, and this outcome is Read More

AI-powered, hardware-based preemptive security is a game changer2023-02-24T16:52:33-06:00

Semiconductor Verification for New-Wave AI Cloud Devices

Paper Submitted by Dave Kelf, Vice President of Marketing and Chief Marketing Officer, Breker Verification Systems The advent of cloud computing has opened new opportunities for extensive data processing. Coupling cloud-based Internet of Things (IoT) solutions with Artificial Intelligence (AI) has enabled a panoply of application opportunities. Highway control, winery growth patterns, automated surveillance all represent diverse examples. The use of AI semiconductors that can apply Machine Learning (ML) to accelerate these applications is key. Be they part of the cloud infrastructure, or operating on the IoT edge, AI provides automated analysis never before possible. AI companies and projects have Read More

Semiconductor Verification for New-Wave AI Cloud Devices2023-02-24T20:09:39-06:00

Coronavirus: Implications for the semiconductor industry

McKinsey & Company Article By Harald Bauer, Ondrej Burkacky, Peter Kenevan, Abhijit Mahindroo and Mark Patel  Article on website here  Despite ongoing quarantines, shelter-in-place orders, and other stringent measures, COVID-19 has continued to spread. As deaths climb and the human toll mounts, leaders are focused on containing the virus and saving lives. In parallel, efforts are under way to mitigate the devastating economic consequences of COVID-19, which include business shutdowns, record unemployment, and unprecedented drops in gross domestic product (GDP) across many countries. The semiconductor industry, which has historically been a major source of high-tech jobs, is among the many sectors that have had to Read More

Coronavirus: Implications for the semiconductor industry2023-02-24T17:00:23-06:00

Identity in IoT – Imagination Technologies and GSA

Paper Submitted by Marc Canel, Vice President of Strategy - Security, Imagination Technologies The world of the Internet of Things (IoT) is characterized by a very large number of devices extracting data from their operational environment and reporting information to analytics systems in their network or in the cloud. These devices reside beyond the edge of the network. Sometimes they have communications capabilities, in other cases they report their data through an edge node that passes the data to the analytics systems. The data created is information about the environment (e.g. temperature, speed). It can also be metadata that describes Read More

Identity in IoT – Imagination Technologies and GSA2023-02-24T20:04:08-06:00

Autonomous Driving and Sensor Fusion SoCs

Paper Submitted by Thomas Wong, Director of Marketing, Automotive Segment, Design IP Group, Cadence Automotive Market Trends In 2016, McKinsey published a report (“Automotive revolution—perspective towards 2030”, McKinsey & Company, January 2016) outlining their perspective of automotive trends through 2030. They described four distinct trends that will drive the automotive industry: connectivity, autonomy, car sharing and electrification. At that time, there was much uncertainty about how much progress could be made in the short term given the technical and business challenges. The connectivity required to support vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V), vehicle to infrastructure (V2I) or vehicle to everything (V2X) was practically non-existent. Read More

Autonomous Driving and Sensor Fusion SoCs2023-02-24T16:53:24-06:00

Budgeting for Hardware Emulation Platforms

Paper Submitted by Lauro Rizzatti, Verification Expert, Rizzatti Hardware emulation is a strategically essential ingredient of a verification flow used in a broad range of applications. It’s also an expensive line item in a yearly budget because of a variety of factors including acquisition cost and expenses to keep it operational, usable, safe and in good working condition. As chip design engineering and verification groups present their budgets for 2020, it’s useful to review the benefits of hardware emulation, and the range of parameters and engineering criteria that contribute to its cost of ownership (COO) before approving the purchase. Thirty Read More

Budgeting for Hardware Emulation Platforms2023-02-24T16:53:48-06:00

The Emergence of Verification 3.0

Paper Submitted by David Kelf, Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, Breker Verification Systems Announcements about new semiconductor applications for artificial intelligence and automotive electronics are welcome news for the semiconductor industry, driving new end-user opportunities. Naturally, these bigger, more powerful chips require formidable, robust verification methodologies. Traditional simulation-based verification is not enough. Even hardware emulation and formal verification environments need fortification. New thinking is required to meet the demands of these complex applications with differing requirements than the past. With so many changes happening in fast succession, some industry watchers believe we’re entering the Verification 3.0 era and the Read More

The Emergence of Verification 3.02023-02-24T20:14:50-06:00

Opposites Attract: IP Standardization vs. Customization

Paper Submitted by Dr. Carlos Macian, Senior Director AI Strategy & Products, eSilicon Corporation Have you had a look lately at an autonomous driving SoC? Have you noticed, besides the cool machine learning stuff, the grocery list of third-party IP that goes into it? It is a long, long list, composed of pieces both big and small and quite diverse. For example, interface and peripheral PHYs and controllers, memories, on-chip interconnects, PVT monitors and PLLs. In some highly-publicized examples, the list includes eSilicon memories, by the way. For something developed under such secrecy and that aims to be so differentiating, Read More

Opposites Attract: IP Standardization vs. Customization2023-02-24T20:07:09-06:00