Guides - Tech Design Forum Techniques

NAND flash is a key technology for all systems. 3D techniques now control its cost and potential for future capacity increases.

Accellera's Portable Stimulus standard aims to improve verification efficiency and the reuse of test IP across the entire design life cycle.

Clock-tree generation is coming under increased scrutiny because of its role in dynamic power consumption and problems caused by on-chip PVT variation.

FinFETs present a number of problems with respect to dynamic power consumption. Design techniques are being re-evaluated to deal with the issue.

The 20nm node can offer power, performance and area advantages, but making these gains takes a deep understanding of the interactions between process and design.

Parasitic extraction reveals the impact of implementation on the theoretical performance of IC designs.

Dynamic voltage and frequency scaling is effective for low-power VLSI design. Body or back bias can provide additional control over leakage and performance.

Monolithic 3DIC integration may provide a viable alternative to conventional 2D scaling for SoCs if manufacturing problems can be overcome.

By taking the circuit supply voltage close to that of the threshold voltage or even below, it is possible to optimize low-power VLSI design. But there are pitfalls.

A static-analysis tool that checks for errors in HDL code, lint is becoming an increasingly important addition to simulation for RTL and SoC signoff.