EDA and IP

Arm has announced flagship processors for phones: Cortex-X1 CPU, Cortex-A78 CPU, Mali-G78 GPU and Ethos-N78 neural network processor (NPU). Offered as part of Arm’s custom programme, Cortex-X1 is the most powerful Cortex processor yet, according to the company, with 30% greater peak performance over the current Cortex-A77 CPU, as well as 22% single-thread integer performance improvements over the just-announced Cortex-A78. “This short high-performance ...

On-chip monitoring is not only revolutionising chip design but influencing end product design. From simply reporting on the functioning of a die, on-chip monitoring has moved to dynamically adjusting a chip’s settings, to reporting how customers use the chip and even to influencing how end products are built. This is why Moortec expects to treble in size from its current ...

CHIPS Alliance has announced  enhancements to the RISC-V SweRV Core EH2 and SweRV Core EL2, developed for the open-source community by Western Digital. Since the introduction of the cores earlier this year, the CHIPS Alliance has worked with its community to validate the cores through a transparent and rigorous process, as well as incorporate a variety of new updates. The ...

PLS Programmierbare Logik & Systeme has expanded its Universal Debug Engine (UDE) to cover the SafeRTOS real-time operating system. UDE is intended for debugging, testing and analysing microcontroller applications, and this addition gives it functions software development of real-time and safety-critical applications. SafeRTOS is a pre-emptive, safety critical RTOS from Wittenstein High Integrity Systems, available pre-certified by TÜV SÜD to ...

UltraSoC and Agile Analog have teamed-up to deliver hardware-based security against ‘analogue interference’ attacks such as power supply or clock signal tampering. The aim is to combining UltraSoC’s embedded on-chip analytics with Agile Analog’s on-chip analogue monitoring IP. As well as voltage and clock glitching, these side-channel attacks can also include deliberate brown-outs and temperature variations, all to gain access to ...

The promise of autonomous vehicles is driving profound changes in the design and testing of automotive semiconductor parts, writes Lee Harrison, Automotive IC Test Solutions Manager, Tessent Group – Mentor, a Siemens Business. Automotive ICs are increasingly developed and manufactured using cutting-edge processes. These devices are no longer only deployed for simple functions like controlling windows or light signaling but ...

Q4 EDA revenues rose 2.2% y-o-y to $2.626 billion, according to the Electronic System Design (ESD) Alliance Market Statistics Service (MSS). Q4 2018 revenues were $2.57 billion. Full year 2019 revenues were $10.2 billion which was 8.3% up on 2018. “The EDA industry reported increased revenue in Q4 compared to Q4 2018, in part due to strong growth in Europe, ...

The Compact Model Coalition (CMC) has adopted a model from French lab Leti for fully-depleted silicon-on-insulator (FD-SoI) chip simulation. Called L-UTSOI, it was “proven by the industry and its standardisation will ensure long-term access and maintenance in EDA tools for FD-SOI designers”, according to Leti. Available to Coalition members now, it will be implemented in major versions of circuit-simulation software, and its ...

Arm’s revenues declined slightly in 2019 in a market that grew, says IPnest, reflecting similar situations in 2018 and 2017. Arm’s royalty revenue declined by 6-7%, says IPnest,  but its licensing revenues  – including physical IP – were up 13%. Companies ranked by semiconductor design IP revenue in 2019 (millions of dollars). Source: IPnest (March 2020). ARM once controlled 50% ...

Google has come up with a neural net that can do IC design placement in record quick time.