The COVID-19 pandemic has mercilessly exposed the weaknesses of institutions upon which the overwhelming majority of the world’s people rely.

Taking a deeper dive into how CRM is changing, and how customer engagement or experience, and AI-powered automation, are two sides of the same coin

A new look DMN is coming your way tomorrow. There will be bells to add and whistles to re-tune, but we hope you like the look

Both China and Russia have been using their social surveillance systems to track people. CNN reports that the Russian state, using 170,000 cameras, even has caught and fined 200 people for violations.

Lawrence's fictitious Indian National Army captain Immanuel Stanley David is faced with a wave of events, mostly untoward circumstances, after his landing in Burma during World War II.

Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman inaugurated the rupee-dollar derivatives trading on the two exchanges on Friday.

The nationwide lockdown suspended the operation of international flights and such people were had to prolong their stay in India. They were concerned that the extra stay due to lockdown may make them a resident of India for tax purposes under section 6 of the Act.

8 Inspiring Steve Jobs Quotes That Will Change The Way You Live Life And Work

Government Of India Announces Major Changes In Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) Policy

As the rest of the world is suffering from the COVID-19 pandemic, things seem to be looking up in China! The smartphone companies have moved to digital mode to launch their products.  Xiaomi is the latest to launch a new product from its Redmi brand, the Redmi Airdots S true wireless earphones. The Redmi AirDots […]

The post Redmi Airdots S Wireless Earphones Launched For Rs 1100! Is This A Gamechanger? first appeared on Trak.in . Trak.in Mobile Apps: Android | iOS.

Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh has made an open-letter proposal suggesting more flexibility for players considering the jump from college to the NFL, including returning to college if they go undrafted.

Test chips are becoming more widespread and more complex at advanced process nodes as design teams utilize early silicon to diagnose problems prior to production. But this approach also is spurring questions about whether this approach is viable at 7nm and 5nm, due to the rising cost of prototyping advanced technology, such as mask tooling and wafer costs.

Semiconductor designers have long been making test chips to validate test structures, memory bit cells, larger memory blocks, and precision analog circuits like current mirrors, PLLs, temperature sensors, and high-speed I/Os. This has been done at 90nm, 65nm, 40nm, 32nm, 28nm, etc., so having test chips at 16nm, 7nm, or finer geometries should not be a surprise. Still, as costs rise, there is debate about whether those chips are over-used given advancements in tooling, or whether they should be utilized even more, with more advanced diagnostics built into them.

Modern EDA tools are very good. You can simulate and validate almost anything with certain degree of accuracy and correctness. The key to having good and accurate tools and accurate results (for simulation) is the quality of the foundry data provided. The key to having good designs (layouts) is that the DRC deck must be of high quality and accurate and must catch all the things you are not supposed to do in the layout. Most of the challenges in advanced node is in the FEOL where semiconductor physics and lithography play outsize roles. Issues that were not an issue at more mature nodes can manifest themselves as big problems at 7nm or 5nm. Process variation across the wafer and variation across a large die also present problems that were of no consequence in more mature nodes.

The real questions to be asked are as follows:

What is the role of test chips in SoC designs?

1. Do all hard IP require test chips for validation?
2. Are test chips more important at advanced nodes compared to more mature nodes?
3. Is the importance of test chip validation relative to the type of IP protocols?
4. What are the risks if I do not validate in silicon?

In complex SoC designs, there are many high-performance protocols such as LPDDR4/4x PHY, PCIe4 PHY, USB3.0 PHY, 56G/112G SerDes, etc. Each one of these IP are very complex in and by itself. If there is any chance of failure that is not detected prior to SoC (tapeout) integration, the cost of retrofit is huge. This is why the common practice is to validate each one of these complex IP in silicon before committing to use such IP in chip integration. The test chips are used to validate that the IP are properly designed and meet the functional specifications of the protocols. They are also used to validate if sufficient margins are designed into the IP to mitigate variances due to process tolerances. All high-performance hard IP go through this test chip/silicon validation process. Oftentimes, marginality is detected at this stage. In advanced nodes, it is also important to have the test chips built under different process corners. This is intended to simulate process variations in production wafers so as to maximize yields. Advanced protocols such as 112G, GDDR6, HBM2, and PCIe4 are incredibly complex and sensitive to process variations. It is almost impossible to design these circuits and try to guarantee their performance without going through the test chip route.

Besides validating performance of the IP protocols, test silicon is also used to validate robustness of ESD structures, sensitivity to latch up, and performance degradation over wide temperature ranges. All these items are more critical in advanced nodes than more mature modes. Test chips are vehicles to guarantee design integrity in bite-size chunks. It is better to deal with any potential issues in smaller blocks than to try to fix them in the final integrated SoC.

Test chips will continue to play a vital role in helping IP and SoC teams lower the risk of their designs, and assuring optimal quality and performance in the foreseeable future. They are not going away!

To read more, please visit https://semiengineering.com/test-chips-play-larger-role-at-advanced-nodes/

As a leading venture capitalist in the electronics technology, as well as CEO of Cadence, Lip-Bu Tan has unique insights into ongoing changes that will impact EDA providers and users. Tan shared some of those insights in a “fireside chat” with Ed Sperling, editor in chief of Semiconductor Engineering, at the Design Automation Conference (DAC 2015) on June 9.

Topics of this discussion included industry consolidation, the need for more talent and more startups, Internet of Things (IoT) opportunities and challenges, the shift from ICs to full product development, and the challenges of advanced nodes. Following are some excerpts from this conversation, held at the DAC Pavilion theater on the exhibit floor.

Ed Sperling (left) and Lip-Bu Tan (right) discuss trends in semiconductors and EDA

Q: As you look out over the semiconductor and EDA industries these days, what worries you most?

Tan: At the top of my list is all the consolidation that is going on. Secondly, chip design complexity is increasing substantially. Time-to-market pressure is growing and advanced nodes have challenges.

The other thing I worry about is that we need to have more startups. There’s a lot of innovation that needs to happen. And this industry needs more top talent. At Cadence, we have a program to recruit over 10% of new hires every year from college graduates. We need new blood and new ideas.

Q: EDA vendors were acquiring companies for many years, but now the startups are pretty much gone. Where does the next wave of innovation come from?

Tan: I’ve been an EDA CEO for the last seven years and I really enjoy it because so much innovation is needed. System providers have very big challenges and very different needs. You have to find the opportunities and go out and provide the solutions.

The opportunities are not just in basic tools. Massive parallelism is critical, and the power challenge is huge. Time to market is critical, and for the IoT companies, cost is going to be critical. If you want to take on some good engineering challenges, this is the most exciting time.

Q: You live two lives—you’re a CEO but you’re also an investor. Where are the investments going these days and where are we likely to see new startups?

Tan: Clearly everybody is chasing the IoT. There is a lot of opportunity in the cloud, in the data center. Also, I’m a big believer in video, so I back companies that are video related. A big area is automotive. ADAS [Advanced Driver Assistance Systems] is a tremendous opportunity.

These companies can help us understand how the industry is transforming, and then we can provide solutions, either in terms of IP, tools, or the PCB. Then we need to connect from the system level down to semiconductors. I think it’s a different way to design.

Q: What happens as we start moving from companies looking to design a semiconductor to system companies who are doing things from the perspective that we have this purpose for our software?

Tan: We are extending from EDA to what we call system design enablement, and we are becoming more application driven. The application at the system level will drive the silicon design. We need to help companies look at the whole system including the power envelope and signal integrity. You don’t want to be in a position where you design a chip all the way to fabrication and then find the power is too high.

We help the customers with hardware/software co-design and co-verification. We have a design suite and a verification suite that can provide customers with high-level abstractions, as well as verify IP blocks at the system level. Then we can break things down to the component level with system constraints in mind, and drive power-aware, system-aware design.

We are starting to move into vertical markets. For example, medical is a tremendous opportunity.

Q: How does this approach change what you provide to customers?

Tan: Every year I spend time meeting with customers. I think it is very important to understand what they are trying to design, and it is also important to know the customer’s customer requirements. We might say, “Wait a minute, for this design you may want to think about power or the library you’re using.” We help them understand what foundry they should use and what process they should use. They don’t view me as a vendor—they view me as a partner.

We also work very closely with our IP and foundry partners. We work as one team—the ultimate goal is customer success.

Q: Is everybody going to say, FinFETs are beautiful, we’re going to go down to 10nm or 7nm—or is it a smaller number of companies who will continue down that path?

Tan: Some of the analog/mixed-signal companies don’t need to go that far. We love those customers—we have close to 50% of that business. But we also have customers in the graphics or processor area who are really pushing the envelope, and need to be in 16nm, 14nm, or 10nm. We work very closely with those guys to make sure they can go into FinFETs.

We always want to work with the customer to make sure they have a first-time silicon success. If you have to do a re-spin, you miss the opportunity and it’s very costly.

Q: There’s a new market that is starting to explode—IoT. How real is that world to you? Everyone talks about large numbers, but is it showing up in terms of tools?

Tan: Everybody is talking about huge profits, but a lot of the time I think it is just connecting old devices that you have. Billions of units, absolutely yes, but if you look close enough the silicon percentage of that revenue is very tiny. A lot of the profit is on the service side. So you really need to look at the service killer app you are trying to provide.

What’s most important to us in the IoT market is the IP business. That’s why we bought Tensilica—it’s programmable, so you can find the killer app more quickly. The other challenges are time to market, low power, and low cost.

Q: Where is system design enablement going? Does it expand outside the traditional market for EDA?

Tan: It’s not just about tools. IP is now 11% of our revenue. At the PCB level, we acquired a company called Sigrity, and through that we are able to drive system analysis for power, signal integrity, and thermal. And then we look at some of the verticals and provide modeling all the way from the system level to the component level. We make sure that we provide a solution to the end customer, rather than something piecemeal.

Q: What do you think DAC will look like in five years?

Tan: It’s getting smaller. We need to see more startups and innovative IP solutions. I saw a few here this year, and that’s good. We need to encourage small startups.

Q: Where do we get the people to pull this off? I don’t see too many people coming into EDA.

Tan: I talk to a lot of university students, and I tell them that this small industry is a gold mine. A lot of innovation is needed. We need them to come in [to EDA] rather than join Google or Facebook. Those are great companies, but there is a lot of fundamental physical innovation we need.

Richard Goering

Related Blog Posts

- Gary Smith at DAC 2015: How EDA Can Expand Into New Directions

- DAC 2015: Google Smart Contact Lens Project Stretches Limits of IC Design

- Q&A with Nimish Modi: Going Beyond Traditional EDA

Greeting to all:

I am new in this tool, only 2 weeks. Trying to create a new Via with smaller size drill hole from exiting 13 mils size to 10 mils size. I got the message as imaged below. Any advise what to do?  Thanks in advance.

visit News18 Urdu for latest news, breaking news, news headlines and updates from Kishanganj on politics, sports, entertainment, cricket, crime and more.

visit News18 Urdu for latest news, breaking news, news headlines and updates from Changalang on politics, sports, entertainment, cricket, crime and more.

visit News18 Urdu for latest news, breaking news, news headlines and updates from Darbhanga on politics, sports, entertainment, cricket, crime and more.

visit News18 Urdu for latest news, breaking news, news headlines and updates from Hoshangabad on politics, sports, entertainment, cricket, crime and more.

This Metasploit module exploits a backdoor in Webmin versions 1.890 through 1.920. Only the SourceForge downloads were backdoored, but they are listed as official downloads on the project's site. Unknown attacker(s) inserted Perl qx statements into the build server's source code on two separate occasions: once in April 2018, introducing the backdoor in the 1.890 release, and in July 2018, reintroducing the backdoor in releases 1.900 through 1.920. Only version 1.890 is exploitable in the default install. Later affected versions require the expired password changing feature to be enabled.

CentOS-WebPanel.com Control Web Panel (CWP) version 0.9.8.851 allows an attacker to change arbitrary passwords.

Open-Xchange OX App Suite suffers from a content spoofing, cross site scripting, and information disclosure vulnerabilities. Versions affected vary depending on the vulnerability.

An exploitable unverified password change vulnerability exists in the ACEManager upload.cgi functionality of Sierra Wireless AirLink ES450 FW 4.9.3. A specially crafted HTTP request can cause a unverified device configuration change, resulting in an unverified change of the user password on the device. An attacker can make an authenticated HTTP request to trigger this vulnerability.

Energy generation and consumption is rapidly transforming into a decentralized, decarbonized, and digitized model due to a number of market forces. The declining costs of solar energy systems, as well as the increasing price of energy from the grid has led to grid parity. This has caused PV proliferation to accelerate to such an extent that in the past five years alone, PV installed capacity has increased by 300%. Simultaneously, the EV market is also on the rise and is expected to reach the electrification tipping point by 2030. This is due to support from governments trying to limit the effects of climate change, thus leading to automotive manufactures transitioning their fleets from standard petrol- and diesel-powered cars to EVs. As a result of the acceleration of both of these markets, EV charging has created demand patterns causing an even steeper and faster ramp-up in the evenings than the PV duck curve. , This is causing the grid’s balancing act to be increasingly complex. In order to support this new energy dynamic, advanced management software is required to ensure grid stabilization and to unlock the value of these energy resources.

Solar company Hanergy announced that its thin-film solar modules will cover the 150,000 square meter roof of the ‘Rafael Gallery’ located at a Tech City in Shanghai.

U.S. Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt has unveiled changes to the implementing regulations of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) that Interior says is “designed to increase transparency and effectiveness and bring the administration of the Act into the 21st century.”

Even as they touted ambitious proposals to reduce carbon emissions to a national audience, Democratic candidates for president tried to balance the boldness of their plans with the need for simplifying a complex scientific problem to make it palatable to voters.

Minnesota’s largest utility wants to change how the state calculates its trailblazing “value of solar” rate as it faces a potential spike in payments to community solar operators.

It was a milestone deal, not for its size but for the number of parties. In January, five big companies, each with differing energy requirements and renewable strategies, agreed to pool their investment and collectively purchase 42.5 megawatts from a North Carolina solar project.

Climate change is picking up pace in Europe, thrusting farmers and power generators onto the front lines of a battle with nature that threatens to upend the lives of the half billion people who occupy the world’s biggest trading bloc.

A new career map, Careers in Climate Control Technology, provides a first-of-its-kind interactive, visual tool to showcase the employment opportunities that exist in the swiftly growing HVAC/R industry – Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning and Refrigeration. The sector is on track for projected growth of 15 percent from 2016 to 2026.

U.S. Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt has unveiled changes to the implementing regulations of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) that Interior says is “designed to increase transparency and effectiveness and bring the administration of the Act into the 21st century.”

Even as they touted ambitious proposals to reduce carbon emissions to a national audience, Democratic candidates for president tried to balance the boldness of their plans with the need for simplifying a complex scientific problem to make it palatable to voters.

The President announced on Tuesday, March 28th at the Environmental Protection Agency his new Executive Order based on protecting 75,000 US coal jobs by threatening over 3 million US clean energy jobs.

Some context:

According to MorningConsult

The order directs officials to review the Environmental Protection Agency regulations on new and existing power plants, withdraw the Obama administration’s “social cost of carbon,” which puts a price on greenhouse gas emissions, end a moratorium on new coal leases on federal land, review regulations on methane emissions from natural gas systems, end a guidance for agencies to consider climate change, and end Bureau of Land Management restrictions on hydraulic fracturing.

The Trump administration has not yet released the text of the order  which is based solely on saving coal and other fossil jobs, but a senior White House official shared details with reporters in a call on March 27th.

It was California’s biggest fire yet. In late July and August, wildfires devastated an area north of San Francisco far bigger than New York City, destroying more than 100 homes and injuring 2 fire fighters. It’s just one in a rash of fast-spreading blazes that have killed at least 56 people this year and last in the Golden State.

Has the environment for electricity generation changed dramatically since the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan began its slow exit from public and regulatory consciousness several months ago? Not really!

The Gentleman coal plant was once the linchpin of Nebraska’s electricity grid, its twin smokestacks visible for miles across the prairie. Now, the state’s biggest power source is routinely pushed aside to make room for more wind and solar energy.