Realizing the benefits of digital twins is more complicated than translating data between tools.

Semiconductor design, manufacturing, and test are becoming much more tightly integrated as the chip industry seeks to optimize designs using fewer engineers, setting the stage for greater efficiencies and potentially lower chip costs without just relying on economies of scale.
The glue between these various processes is data…

Prototypes are transforming rapidly to take on myriad tasks, but they are hampered by a lack of abstractions, standards, and interfaces.

Chipmakers are piling an increasing set of demands on virtual prototypes that go well beyond its original scope, forcing EDA companies to significantly rethink models, abstractions, interfaces, view orthogonality, and flows.
The virtual prototype has been around for at least 20 years, but…

How prepared the EDA community is to address upcoming challenges isn’t clear.

Dennard scaling is gone, Amdahl’s Law is reaching its limit, and Moore’s Law is becoming difficult and expensive to follow, particularly as power and performance benefits diminish. And while none of that has reduced opportunities for much faster, lower-power chips, it has significantly shifted the dynamics for their design and manufacturing.

Rather…

Does anyone really care if a design is bug-free? The cost probably would be prohibitive.

It is possible in theory to create a design with no bugs, but it’s impractical, unnecessary, and extremely difficult to prove for bugs you care about.

The problem is intractable because the potential state space is enormous for any practical design. The industry has devised ways to handle this complexity, but each has limitations, makes assumptions,…

From specific design team skills, to organizational and economic impacts, the move to bespoke silicon is shaking things up.

Bespoke silicon developers are shaking up relationships, priorities, and methodologies across the semiconductor industry, creating demand for skills that cross traditional boundaries, and driving new business models that leverage these enormous investments.
Bespoke silicon designers today are a rare breed, capable…

New memory approaches and challenges in scaling CMOS point to radical changes — and potentially huge improvements — in semiconductor designs.

We take many things in the semiconductor world for granted, but what if some of the decisions made decades ago are no longer viable or optimal? We saw a small example with finFETs, where the planar transistor would no longer scale. Today we are facing several bigger disruptions that…

Whether EDA is doing enough to help develop and drive new methodologies remains a subject of debate.

Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss digital twins and what is required to develop and verify new chips across a variety of industries, such as automotive and aerospace, with Larry Lapides, vice president of sales for Imperas Software; Mike Thompson, director of engineering for the verification…

Is the tools market really changing, or has this always been the case?

More companies appear to be creating custom EDA tools, but it is not clear if this trend is accelerating and what it means for the mainstream EDA industry.

Whenever there is change, there is opportunity. Change can come from new abstractions, new options for optimization, or new limitations that are imposed on a tool or flow. For example, the slowing of Moore’…

The industry is evolving, with new players, new problems, and new challenges. Is this why verification appears to be struggling?

Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss differences between hardware and software verification and changes and challenges facing the chip industry, with Larry Lapides, vice president of sales for Imperas Software; Mike Thompson, director of engineering for the verification…