Dennard scaling is gone, Amdahl's Law is reaching its limit, and Moore's Law is becoming difficult and expensive to follow, particularly as power and performance benefits diminish. And while none of that has reduced opportunities for much faster, lower-power chips, it has significantly shifted the dynamics for their design and manufacturing. Rather than just different process nodes and half nodes, companies developing chips -- traditional chip companies, automotive OEMs, fabless and non-fabless IDMs, and large systems companies -- are now wrestling with more options and more unique challenges as they seek optimal solutions for their specific applications. And they are all demanding more from an EDA ecosystem, which is racing to keep up with these changes, including various types of advanced packaging, chiplets, and a demand for integrated and customized hardware and software. "While heterogeneous integration predates the end of Dennard scaling or flattening of Moore's Law by several years, silicon designers and system architects are embracing this paradigm now to retain their pursuit of PPA goals -- without empirical law and its derivatives," said Saugat Sen, vice president of R&D at Cadence. "While there are many architectural and design challenges in this era, addressing thermal concerns rise to the top. Efficiency in design and implementation has been intricately linked to closed-loop integration with multi-physics analyses for awhile. More-than-Moore has created a compelling case for the implementation-analyses microcosm to transcend across the fabrics of system design, from silicon to package, and even beyond, and more so in the systems companies that are at the bleeding edge of design innovation."

Benjamin Frisch: OK, let's maybe start with some quick background: What's your relationship to the Mario universe? I've played pretty much all of the mainline Mario games, with the exception of 3D World, which I was very excited to finally get to play, since I sat out on Nintendo's previous console, the Wii U. Karen Han: I've always lived in a Nintendo household, but I admittedly haven't played that many of the big Mario games--most of my Mario experience comes from the Mario Party and Mario Kart series, though I feel like no one who was around when Super Mario Sunshine came out [in 2002 on GameCube] could escape that game completely. I also played through Super Mario Odyssey when it came out on the Switch, but I'd say that's the only Mario game I've ever actually completed. Evan Urquhart: The first video game I really got into as a child was Super Mario Bros. 3, and one of my all-time favorite games is Super Mario 64, so I have a deep connection to this series. I've played most of the 2D and 3D games, but like others, I skipped the Wii U entry, so I'm new to 3D World.

Obsidian Entertainment's crowdfunder for Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire reached its funding goal of $1.1 million in less than one day. Deadfire is the sequel to the original Pillars of Eternity that set Kickstarter funding records by raising $4 million in 2012. Feargus Urquhart, the CEO of Obsidian Entertainment, is a member of the advisory board of Fig, a crowdfunding platform devoted to games. Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire is being funded through Fig rather than Kickstarter. Fig is significantly different from Kickstarter.