Cadence Underlines Verification Throughput at DVCon

Cadence Underlines Verification Throughput at DVCon
by Bernard Murphy on 03-10-2021 at 6:00 am

Verification Throughput min

Paul Cunningham, CVP and GM of the System Verification Group at Cadence gave the afternoon Keynote on Tuesday at DVCon and doubled down on his verification-throughput message. At the end of the day, what matters most to us in verification is the number of bugs found and fixed per dollar per day. You can’t really argue with that message.… Read More


TECHTALK: Hierarchical PI Analysis of Large Designs with Voltus Solution

TECHTALK: Hierarchical PI Analysis of Large Designs with Voltus Solution
by Bernard Murphy on 03-03-2021 at 6:00 am

voltus min

Power integrity analysis in large chip designs is especially challenging thanks to the huge dynamic range the analysis must span. At one end, EM estimation and IR drop through interconnect and advanced transistor structures require circuit-level insight—very fine-grained insight but across a huge design. At the other, activity… Read More


Finding Large Coverage Holes. Innovation in Verification

Finding Large Coverage Holes. Innovation in Verification
by Bernard Murphy on 02-24-2021 at 6:00 am

Innovation image 2021 min

Is it possible to find and prioritize holes in coverage through AI-based analytics on coverage data? Paul Cunningham (GM, Verification at Cadence), Jim Hogan and I continue our series on research ideas. As always, feedback welcome.

The Innovation

This month’s pick is Using Machine Learning Clustering To Find Large Coverage Read More


Arteris IP folds in Magillem. Perfect for SoC Integrators

Arteris IP folds in Magillem. Perfect for SoC Integrators
by Bernard Murphy on 02-18-2021 at 6:00 am

merge min

Arteris IP and Magillem recently tied the knot, creating a merger of Network-on-Chip (NoC) and related Intellectual Property (IP) with a platform known for IP-XACT based SoC integration and related support. This is interesting to me because I’m familiar with products and people in both companies. I talked to Kurt Shuler, vice… Read More


Happy Birthday UVM! A Very Grown-Up 10-Year-Old

Happy Birthday UVM! A Very Grown-Up 10-Year-Old
by Bernard Murphy on 02-16-2021 at 6:00 am

UVM logo min

.The UVM standard was first released by Accellera 10 years ago this month and is now by far the leading methodology for functionally verifying logic designs, especially at the block level. As I write, DVCon fast approaches so I talked to Tom Fitzpatrick, Verification Technologist at Siemens EDA (Mentor Graphics) for a perspective.… Read More


A New ML Application, in Formal Regressions

A New ML Application, in Formal Regressions
by Bernard Murphy on 02-10-2021 at 6:00 am

A New ML Application

Machine learning (ML) is a once-in-a-generation innovation that seems like it should be applicable almost everywhere. It’s certainly revolutionized automotive safety, radiology and many other domains. In our neck of the woods, SoC implementation is advancing through learning to reduce total negative slacks and better optimize… Read More


Pitching Without a Net. Look Ma, No Slides!

Pitching Without a Net. Look Ma, No Slides!
by Bernard Murphy on 02-01-2021 at 6:00 am

Book Cover min

It’s a given in the business world that whenever you need to communicate to a group you need a slide deck. Yet we vigorously agree that most pitches are miserably bad, for all the usual reasons. All about the presenter’s product, not audience needs. A firehose of technical detail designed to drown any possible objection. A script … Read More


Change Management for Functional Safety

Change Management for Functional Safety
by Bernard Murphy on 01-27-2021 at 6:00 am

safety min

By now we’re pretty familiar with the requirements ISO 26262 places on development for automotive safety. The process, procedures and metrics you will apply to meet various automotive safety integrity levels (ASIL). You need to train organizations. In fact you should establish a safety culture across the whole company or line… Read More


2020 Retrospective. Innovation in Verification

2020 Retrospective. Innovation in Verification
by Bernard Murphy on 01-20-2021 at 6:00 am

innovation min

Paul Cunningham (GM, Verification at Cadence), Jim Hogan and I launched our series on Innovation in Verification at the beginning of last year. We wanted to explore basic innovations and new directions researchers are taking for hardware and system verification. Even we were surprised to find how rich a seam we had tapped. We plan… Read More


CDC, Low Power Verification. Mentor and Cypress Perspective

CDC, Low Power Verification. Mentor and Cypress Perspective
by Bernard Murphy on 01-13-2021 at 6:00 am

CDC Low Power

Clock domain crossing (CDC) analysis is unavoidable in any modern SoC design and is challenging enough to verify in its own right. CDC plus low power management adds more excitement to your verification task. I wrote on this topic for another solution provider last year. This time I want to intro an interesting twist on the problem,… Read More