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16 June 2007
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News & Analysis
While EDA vendors are still fighting over two low-power formats, a larger problem may have been obscured: Low-power techniques are so difficult that a rethinking of the entire IC design flow may be needed.
IBM Corp. has vowed to commercialize the ultimate dielectric—a pure vacuum—between metal lines of its 32nm chips, thereby reducing parasitic capacitance on interconnection layers by 36 percent.
If the process by which technology standards are forged and implemented isn't broken, it is surely straining under the relentless technological change, patent-infringement suits and the increasingly noisy standards battles among competing industry consortia.
Experts from chip, EDA and foundry companies ask whether it's better to deal with DFM and DFY issues at tape-out or minister to the design starting at the register transfer level.
The country's battery and PC industries have jointly hammered out guidelines for the safe use of Li-ion batteries, and presented it to the International Electrotechnical Commission.
Taiwan's BenQ has opted to spin off its branded business instead of its manufacturing division in an effort to find firm footing after a disastrous attempt to become a household name.
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PMC-Sierra is pushing through the transition to 6Gbps Serial Attached-SCSI (SAS) hard disk interface with the sampling of Tachyon SPC 8x6G SAS controller for the SAS 2.0 standard.
Promising relief for bandwidth-constrained professional broadcast and video applications, LSI Logic Corp. has introduced a high-definition MPEG-2-to-H.264 transcoder chip.
The company will release a second-generation broadband access client chip aimed at low-cost customer-premises equipment, such as simple access points, home gateways and advanced routers.
TI's ADS6000 family enables programmable options such as coarse and fine gain controls, and incorporates single- or dual-stream serialized LVDS outputs to reduce board space by 60 percent over CMOS-output solutions.
The 460EX is implemented in a 90nm process for frequencies of 667MHz to 1.2GHz and stakes out the high end of the PowerPC line that Applied Micro Circuits acquired from IBM in 2004.
RedHawk-ALP provides dynamic power integrity analysis for power-gated memories, variable-threshold CMOS circuits with substrate back-biasing and on-chip LDO voltage regulators.
Now that wireless MCUs and derived products are beginning to enter the market in force, control functions are following suit--and that effort is paying off.
Designed to support wireless applications, Freescale Semiconductor's single-chip Zigbee platform-in-package enables up to 20-year battery life and features up to 2Mbps TurboLink technology.
This article discusses better ways to predict temperature for faster and denser FPGA components in a system environment.
The EDA community must provide designers with automated solutions that optimize power while addressing other design and market requirements, including speed, cost and IC-manufacturing yield.
The widespread adoption of SystemVerilog in SoC design has seen traditional test-based planning being supplanted by more sophisticated verification plans that track coverage and assertions.
Design-for-debug provides good visibility into silicon signal data, improving silicon debug productivity and minimizing system validation time.
Unless you're convinced your chips will always be perfect the first time, post-silicon debugging could be worth a second look.
Technical Features
A programmable coprocessor approach offers an attractive balance of performance, power consumption, cost and scalability, and supports all features expected of consumer Wi-Fi handsets. (PDF file)
This article outlines some PCB layout practices relevant to the design of any portable system that includes audio playback and/or recording functionality. (PDF file)
The need for high-efficiency charging, high levels of feature integration, efficient use of board space and increased product reliability exert considerable pressure on the design of battery-powered devices. (PDF file)
The parallel fail-safe method provides some unique advantages over both external-biasing and in-path methods in low-voltage differential signaling systems. (PDF file)
Negative-swing-capable audio amplifiers can achieve higher-quality audio performance than was possible with traditional single-ended amplifiers, enabling advanced 'phone-plus-MP3 player' handsets. (PDF file)
Using integrated circuitry with light sensors enables on-chip calibration, filtering and increased resolution for applications in consumer products ranging from night lights to cameras. (PDF file)
As primary yield-loss mechanisms move from particle-type to feature-related defects, scan test and scan diagnostics play an increasingly important role in failure analysis and yield improvement. (PDF file)
Using a UML/SysML-based model-driven development environment and a model-based design is an integrated modeling approach that covers the complete process of designing industrial applications. (PDF file)
Opinion
Multimedia, which once made waves in the PC arena, must again find its place in converged devices.
The embedded industry needs to invest more in innovative software development methods just as IC productivity was dramatically improved with new design technology.
Interview
Dave Orton, ATI's former CEO and now AMD's executive VP for Visual and Media Business, talked with EE Times about some of the company's targets and technical hurdles with getting Fusion devices ready for market. He also elaborated on AMD's vision and its progress toward the multicore future.
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