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Semiconductor Device Physics, Lab in a Box

Semiconductor Device Physics, Lab in a Box
by Daniel Payne on 09-13-2017 at 12:00 pm

One of my favorite classes in college was the lab exercise, mostly because we actually got to use real electronics and then measure something, finally writing it up in our lab notebooks. The issue today is that a college student taking Electrical Engineering probably doesn’t have much access to 10nm FinFET silicon for use… Read More


AI Being Used from Probing to Simulation

AI Being Used from Probing to Simulation
by Daniel Payne on 06-06-2017 at 12:00 pm

The 54th annual DAC event is fast approaching, so I hope to see many of you in Austin on June 18-21. The phrases Machine Learning and AI are growing in all areas of software, so I’m glad to see it appearing in more EDA tool offerings over the past year or so. One company that I plan to visit at DAC is Platform Design Automation because… Read More


Noise, The Need for Speed, and Machine Learning

Noise, The Need for Speed, and Machine Learning
by Riko Radojcic on 05-08-2017 at 7:00 am

Technology trends make the concerns with electronic noise a primary constraint that impacts many mainstream products, driving the need for “Design-for-Noise” practices. That is, scaling, and the associated reduction in the device operating voltage and current, in effect magnifies the relative importance of non-scalableRead More


Something New for Semiconductor Parametric Testing

Something New for Semiconductor Parametric Testing
by Daniel Payne on 03-01-2017 at 7:00 am

The familiar maxim that “time is money” certainly typifies our semiconductor industry where the mass production of chips, boards and systems helps to power our global economy and ever-increasing standard of living. The foundries that manufacture chips have to ensure that the process technology is in fact producing… Read More


SPICE Model Generation using Machine Learning

SPICE Model Generation using Machine Learning
by Daniel Payne on 02-05-2017 at 10:00 pm

AI and machine learning are two popular buzz words in the high-tech daily news, so you should be getting used to hearing about them by now. What I hadn’t realized was that EDA companies are starting to use machine learning techniques, and specifically targeted at the daunting and compute intensive task of creating SPICE models… Read More


CEO Interview: Albert Li of Platform DA

CEO Interview: Albert Li of Platform DA
by Daniel Nenni on 11-27-2016 at 7:00 am

Platform Design Automation, Inc (PDA). recently closed a US$6 million pre Series A investment round, and the company has shifted its focus from providing SPICE modeling related software and services to forming a complete AI-driven ecosystem from probing to simulation. Albert Li was the GM of Accelicon, a leading EDA tool and … Read More


Is That PDK Safe to Use Yet?

Is That PDK Safe to Use Yet?
by Daniel Payne on 10-28-2016 at 12:00 pm

In our semiconductor ecosystem we have foundries on one side supplying all of that amazing silicon technology, and IC designers on the other side that take their system ideas then go implement them in a SoC using a specific foundry. The required interface between foundry and chip designers has been the Process Design Kit (PDK), … Read More


Why is Low Frequency Noise Measurement for ICs Such a Big Deal?

Why is Low Frequency Noise Measurement for ICs Such a Big Deal?
by Daniel Payne on 09-27-2016 at 12:00 pm

Even digital designers need to be aware of how noise impacts their circuits because most clocked designs today use a Phase Locked Loop (PLL) block which contains a circuit called a Voltage Controlled Oscillator (VCO) that is quite sensitive in operation to the effects of noise and process variation. As process node scaling continues… Read More


Are Your Transistor Models Good Enough?

Are Your Transistor Models Good Enough?
by Daniel Payne on 08-16-2016 at 12:00 pm

SoC designers can now capture their design ideas with high-level languages like C and SystemC, then synthesize those abstractions down into RTL code or gates, however in the end the physical IC is implemented using cell libraries made up of transistors. Circuit designers use simulation tools like SPICE on these transistor-level… Read More