Category Archives: ASIC Design

Overview and Dynamics of Scan Chain Testing

This is a guest post by Naman Gupta, a Static Timing Analysis (STA) engineer at a leading semiconductor company in India.

In accordance with the Moore’s Law, the number of transistors on integrated circuits doubles after every two years. While such high packing densities allow more functionality to be incorporated on

Will more ASIC design companies cooperate with Apple and Google?

It’s no secret that Google, Amazon and Apple are heavily involved in the semiconductor industry. Apple itself is the biggest buyer of chips and estimated to buy 10% of chips sold worldwide.  Google uses Intel’s CPUs in their server farms and represent alone 4% of Intel total sales.
 
Both

Electrostatic Discharge vs Electromigration

This is a guest post by Naman Gupta, a Static Timing Analysis (STA) engineer at a leading semiconductor company in India.

Electrostatic Discharge and Electromigration might sound similar, but refer to two different physical phenomena. Let’s take them up one by one.
 
Electrostatic Discharge (ESD) is the large current flow between any

Lock-Up Latch: Implication on Timing

This is a guest post by Naman Gupta, a Static Timing Analysis (STA) engineer at a leading semiconductor company in India.

 
Lock-Up Latches are important elements for STA engineer while closing timing on their DFT Modes: particularly the hold timing closure of the Shift Mode. While shifting, the scan chains

Semiconductor Technology Nodes – History, Trends and Forecast

Semiconductor foundries claim they release a new technology node every two years. They may be off by a year or two, but on the whole, this is quite impressive, no doubt. Come to think of it, I don’t believe many of us even change our mobile phone every two years. How

ASIC Prototyping – Should you purchase Boards or DIY?

With the increased complexity of SoC designs, high tapeout prices and shrinking time-to-market, ASIC Prototyping has become a key step in ASIC projects. FPGA development boards are being used more often to verify ASIC design, test hardware and software integration, and provide a proof of concept demonstration to potential customers