Shifting left software development; advancements in car power architectures; Japan’s semiconductor subsidies; ADI acquires Flex Logix

Let’s start with a quick geopolitical update: Vietnam is emerging as a destination for new semiconductor-related investments. According to press reports, Foxconn intends to step up its presence in the country to produce integrated circuits, and multiple players – both foreign and domestic companies – are expanding capacity in Vietnam for chip testing and packaging.

EDA updates

Siemens Digital Industries Software has added the Innexis product suite to its Veloce hardware-assisted verification and validation system, to address demand for shift-left software development in the design process of complex SoCs. Currently, the Innexis product suite consists of: Innexis Developer Pro, which provides a connected development flow from virtual to hybrid to full RTL; Innexis Architecture Native Acceleration, a cloud-based high-speed virtual platform; Innexis Virtual System Interconnect, to facilitate the creation and simulation of comprehensive system level digital twin platforms by connecting multi-behavioral virtual and physical subsystems.

Altair PollEx for ECAD, a PCB verification tool, is now available as a one-year free trial. The tool enables engineers – early in the design cycle – to review designs, analyze, verify, and assess physical, logical, and electrical attributes, and detect potential manufacturing and electrical issues. It can also boost production yield with ECAD integration, and ensure collaboration throughout the PCB development process. Altair PollEx for ECAD integrates with major PCB design tools like the ones from Altium, Cadence, Siemens, and Zuken.

Celus’ AI-driven automation has been integrated with Siemens’ PCB design solutions, enabling a workflow that automates routine design tasks like schematic generation. This cooperation aims at enhancing accessibility and efficiency in PCB design for small to medium-sized businesses and independent engineers.

Excellicon has re-engineered its core timing graph engine to address the performance requirements of timing constraints generation and verification in complex SoC designs, characterized by a surge in gate count and the proliferation of clock domains. According to the company, its newly developed Hyper-Graph technology delivers a 3X-5X run time speed improvement over the nearest competitor.

Partnerships in automotive power architectures

Renesas and Nidec have jointly developed an “8-in-1” proof of concept for E-Axle systems for electric vehicles, which controls eight functions using a single microcontroller. Together with the motor and reduction gear from Nidec, the eight functions in the PoC include a 70~100kW inverter with maximum efficiency of 99 percent or higher; a 1.5kW output DC/DC converter; a 6.6kW on-board battery charger; a power distribution unit; a battery management system; and Positive Temperature Co-efficiency heater control. While generally each function of an E-Axle requires a dedicated MCU and a power management IC, Renesas successfully implemented a new E-Axle system which can operate with only one MCU and a PMIC to control the entire 8-in-1 system.

Stellantis and Infineon will work jointly on the power architecture for electric vehicles. The companies have signed supply and capacity agreements that will serve as the foundation for the planned collaboration in areas including Infineon’s PROFET smart power switches, which will replace traditional fuses, reduce wiring and enable intelligent power network management; silicon carbide semiconductors, which will support Stellantis in its efforts to standardize its power modules; and Aurix microcontrollers. Stellantis and Infineon are also in the process of implementing a Joint Power Lab.

Japanese government’s semiconductor initiatives

The Japanese government has reportedly unveiled a $65 billion plan to boost the country’s chip and artificial intelligence industries via subsidies and other financial incentives. The plan specifically targets Japanese foundry Rapidus and other suppliers of AI chips.

EdgeCortix, a Japanese fabless semiconductor company specializing in energy-efficient AI processing, has been awarded a 4 billion Yen subsidy from Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI).

Tenstorrent has been selected by Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI) to train up to 200 Japanese silicon engineers. As part of this program with Japan’s Leading-edge Semiconductor Technology Center, Tenstorrent will bring the engineers to its United States sites, to work on the company’s AI/ML technology over the course of five years.

New processing concepts

The quest for innovative processing concepts doesn’t stop, with new ideas being proposed by startups and academic researchers. Startup NextSilicon has recently emerged from stealth with the launch of Maverick-2, an “intelligent software-defined hardware accelerator” targeted at HPC applications. The system creates “software-defined processor cores tailored to the performance needs of each application and then executed on the accelerator hardware”, using telemetry data to continuously self-optimize performance, power consumption, and utilization in real-time. Details can be found here.  A Technion research team has focused on processing-in-memory (PIM) architectures, proposing an efficient microarchitecture and instruction set architecture (ISA) that bridge the gap between the low-level control periphery and an abstraction of PIM parallelism. They subsequently propose a PIM development library that converts high-level Python to ISA instructions and a PIM driver that translates ISA instructions into PIM micro-operations.

Acquisitions

Flex Logix, a company specializing in embedded FPGA and AI IP, has been acquired by Analog Devices. While the two companies have not issued any official press releases at the moment, confirmation of the deal can be found in this LinkedIn post.

Macom has acquired Engin-IC, a fabless semiconductor company that designs advanced Gallium Nitride monolithic microwave integrated circuits and integrated microwave assemblies, located in Plano, Texas and San Diego, California.

Jolt Capital, a private equity firm, has purchased the power management and signal processing IP activities of French company Dolphin Design – a subsidiary of Soitec – through Dolphin Semiconductor, a newly created company. A few days later, NanoXplore announced the acquisition of the ASIC business of Dolphin Design. NanoXplore is a French fabless company offering radiation-hardened FPGA devices for high-reliability environments, particularly in space and avionics.

India-headquartered Tessolve, a provider of semiconductor engineering solutions, has signed a definitive agreement to acquire 100% of Dream Chip Technologies, a semiconductor chip design firm headquartered in Germany, for a consideration of up to EUR 42.5 million. The acquisition will expand Tessolve’s European operations by adding four locations across Germany and the Netherlands, including a specialized ADAS & imaging center-of-excellence lab.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 13th, 2024 at 4:19 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.