Bug localization continues to be a challenge for both bug triage and root-cause analysis. Agentic approaches suggest a way forward. Paul Cunningham (GM, Verification at Cadence), Raúl Camposano (Silicon Catalyst, entrepreneur, former Synopsys CTO and lecturer at Stanford, EE292A) and I continue our series on research ideas.… Read More
Author: Bernard Murphy
Agentic Bug Localization. Innovation in Verification
An Insight into Building Quantum Computers
Given my physics background I’m ashamed to admit I know very little about quantum computers (QC) though I’m now working to correct that defect. Like many of you I wanted to start with the basics: what are the components and systems in the physical implementation of a quantum “CPU” and how do they map to classical CPUs? I’m finding the… Read More
Arm FCSA and the Journey to Standardizing Open Chiplet-Based Design
I have written before about an inter-chiplet communication challenge to realizing the dream of multi-die designs built around open-market chiplets. Still a worthy dream but it’s going to take a journey to get there. Arm recently donated their Foundation Chiplet System Architecture (FCSA) to the Open Compute Project (OCP) as… Read More
Adding Expertise to GenAI: An Insightful Study on Fine-Tuning
I wrote earlier about how deep expertise, say for high-quality RTL design or verification, must be extracted from in-house know-how and datasets. In general, such methods start with one of many possible pre-trained models (GPT, Llama, Gemini, etc.). To this consultants or in-house teams add fine-tuning training, initially… Read More
Think Quantum Computing is Hype? Mastercard Begs to Disagree
Just got an opportunity to write a blog on PQShield, and I’m delighted for several reasons. Happy to work with a company based in Oxford and happy to work on a quantum computing-related topic, which you’ll find I will be getting into more deeply over coming months. (Need a little relief from a constant stream of AI topics.) Also important,… Read More
AI RTL Generation versus AI RTL Verification
I should admit up front that I don’t have a scientific answer to this comparison, but I do have a reasonably informed gut feel, at least for the near-term. The reason I ask the question is that automated RTL generation grabs headlines with visions of designing chips through natural language prompts, making design widely accessible.… Read More
A Compelling Differentiator in OEM Product Design
Jennifer, an OEM hardware designer, is planning a product around a microcontroller she thinks will meet her needs and wants to supply power from a 3V coin cell battery which she must connect though a boost controller. Jennifer searches a rough description of the part she needs, generating a long list of component manufacturers … Read More
Emulator-Like Simulation Acceleration on GPUs. Innovation in Verification
GPUs have been proposed before to accelerate logic simulation but haven’t quite met the need yet. This is a new attempt based on emulating emulator flows. Paul Cunningham (GM, Verification at Cadence), Raúl Camposano (Silicon Catalyst, entrepreneur, former Synopsys CTO and lecturer at Stanford, EE292A) and I continue our series… Read More
Learning from In-House Datasets
At a DAC Accellera panel this year there was some discussion on cross-company collaboration in training. The theory is that more collaboration would mean a larger training set and therefore higher accuracy in GenAI (for example in RTL generation). But semiconductor companies are very protective of their data and reports of copyrighted… Read More
Statically Verifying RTL Connectivity with Synopsys
Many years ago, not long after we first launched SpyGlass, I was looking around for new areas where we could apply static verification methods and was fortunate to meet Ralph Marlett, a guy (now friend) with extensive experience in DFT. Ralph joined us and went on to build the very capable SpyGlass DFT app. So capable that SpyGlass… Read More
An Insight into Building Quantum Computers