Speculation for Simulation. Innovation in Verification

Speculation for Simulation. Innovation in Verification
by Bernard Murphy on 03-28-2023 at 6:00 am

Innovation New

This is an interesting idea, using hardware-supported speculative parallelism to accelerate simulation, with a twist requiring custom hardware. Paul Cunningham (Senior VP/GM, Verification at Cadence), Raúl Camposano (Silicon Catalyst, entrepreneur, former Synopsys CTO and now Silvaco CTO) and I continue our series on… Read More


Siemens Keynote Stresses Global Priorities

Siemens Keynote Stresses Global Priorities
by Bernard Murphy on 03-27-2023 at 6:00 am

Space Perspective

Dirk Didascalou, Siemens CTO, gave a keynote at DVCon, raising our perspective on why we do what we do. Yes, our work in semiconductor design enables the cloud and 5G and smart everything, but these technologies push progress for a select few. What about the big global concerns that affect us all: carbon, climate, COVID and conflict?… Read More


Intel Keynote on Formal a Mind-Stretcher

Intel Keynote on Formal a Mind-Stretcher
by Bernard Murphy on 03-22-2023 at 6:00 am

Intellectual understanding min

Synopsys has posted on the SolvNet site a fascinating talk given by Dr. Theo Drane of Intel Graphics. The topic is datapath equivalency checking. Might sound like just another Synopsys VC Formal DPV endorsement but you should watch it anyway. This is a mind-expanding discussion on the uses of and considerations in formal which … Read More


Accellera Update at DVCon 2023

Accellera Update at DVCon 2023
by Bernard Murphy on 03-16-2023 at 6:00 am

logo accellera min

I have a new-found respect for Lu Dai. He is a senior director of engineering at Qualcomm, with valuable insight into the ground realities of verification in a big semiconductor company. He is on the board of directors at RISC-V International and is chairman of the board of directors at Accellera, both giving him a top-down view of… Read More


Scaling the RISC-V Verification Stack

Scaling the RISC-V Verification Stack
by Bernard Murphy on 03-15-2023 at 6:00 am

RISC V verification stack

The RISC-V open ISA premise was clearly a good bet. It’s taking off everywhere, however verification is still a challenge. As an alternative to Arm, the architecture and functionality from multiple IP providers looks very competitive, but how do RISC-V providers and users ensure the same level of confidence we have in Arm? Arm … Read More


Scaling AI as a Service Demands New Server Hardware

Scaling AI as a Service Demands New Server Hardware
by Bernard Murphy on 03-14-2023 at 6:00 am

NLP min

While I usually talk about AI inference on edge devices, for ADAS or the IoT, in this blog I want to talk about inference in the cloud or an on-premises datacenter (I’ll use “cloud” below as a shorthand to cover both possibilities). Inference throughput in the cloud is much higher today than at the edge. Think about support in financial… Read More


DSP Innovation Promises to Boost Virtual RAN Efficiency

DSP Innovation Promises to Boost Virtual RAN Efficiency
by Bernard Murphy on 03-08-2023 at 6:00 am

DSP multi threading min

5G is already real, though some of us are wondering why our phone connections aren’t faster. That perspective misses the real intent of 5G – to extend high throughput (and low latency) communication to a vast number and variety of edge devices beyond our phones. One notable application is Fixed Wireless Access (FWA), promising … Read More


Physically Aware NoC Design Arrives With a Big Claim

Physically Aware NoC Design Arrives With a Big Claim
by Bernard Murphy on 02-23-2023 at 6:00 am

NoC manual flow min

I wrote last month about physically aware NoC design, so you shouldn’t be surprised that Arteris is now offering exactly that capability 😊. First, a quick recap on why physical awareness is important, especially below 16nm. Today, between the top level and subsystems a state-of-art SoC may contain anywhere from five to twenty … Read More


ML-Based Coverage Acceleration. Innovation in Verification

ML-Based Coverage Acceleration. Innovation in Verification
by Bernard Murphy on 02-16-2023 at 6:00 am

Innovation New

We looked at another paper on ML-based coverage acceleration back in April 2022. Here is a different angle from IBM. Paul Cunningham (Senior VP/GM, Verification at Cadence), Raúl Camposano (Silicon Catalyst, entrepreneur, former Synopsys CTO and now Silvaco CTO) and I continue our series on research ideas. As always, feedback… Read More


Synopsys Design Space Optimization Hits a Milestone

Synopsys Design Space Optimization Hits a Milestone
by Bernard Murphy on 02-09-2023 at 6:00 am

DSO.ai flow min

I talked recently with Stelios Diamantidis (Distinguished Architect, Head of Strategy, Autonomous Design Solutions) about Synopsys’ announcement on the 100th customer tapeout using their DSO.ai solution. My concern on AI-related articles is in avoiding the hype that surrounds AI in general, and conversely the skepticism… Read More