Coverage improvement effectiveness through randomized testing declines as total coverage improves. Attacking stubborn holes in coverage could be augmented through learned novel test guidance to random test selection. Paul Cunningham (GM, Verification at Cadence), Raúl Camposano (Silicon Catalyst, entrepreneur, former… Read More
Author: Bernard Murphy
Novelty-Based Methods for Random Test Selection. Innovation in Verification
System VIPs are to PSS as Apps are to Formal
In the formal world the core technology is extremely powerful, and specialist users need full access to tackle difficult problems. But for many applications, teams prefer canned solutions built on the core technology yet scalable to non-experts. A similar dynamic appears to be playing out between System VIPs and PSS. PSS, the… Read More
Automotive Autonomy’s Quiet Advance Through Radar
Given false starts and OEM strategic retreats you could be forgiven for thinking that the autonomous personal car dream is now a lost cause. But that’s not quite true. While moonshot goals have been scaled back or are running under wraps, applications continue to advance, for adaptive cruise control, collision avoidance, automatic… Read More
Arm Client 2024 Growing into AI Phones and AI PCs
I wrote last year about the challenge Arm Client/Mobile faces in growing in a saturated phone market and how they put a big focus on mobile gaming to stimulate growth. The gaming direction continues but this year they have added (of course) an AI focus, not just to mobile but also to other clients, notably PCs. It would be easy to be cynical… Read More
Using LLMs for Fault Localization. Innovation in Verification
We have talked about fault localization (root cause analysis) in several reviews. This early-release paper looks at applying LLM technology to the task. Paul Cunningham (GM, Verification at Cadence), Raúl Camposano (Silicon Catalyst, entrepreneur, former Synopsys CTO and now Silvaco CTO) and I continue our series on research… Read More
From System Design to Drug Design. The Rationale
I’m guessing that more than a few people were mystified (maybe still are) when Cadence acquired OpenEye Scientific, a company known for computational molecular design aimed at medical drug/therapeutics discovery. What could EDA, even SDA (system design automation), and drug discovery possibly have in common? More than you… Read More
A Recipe for Performance Optimization in Arm-Based Systems
Around the mid-2000’s the performance component of Moore’s Law started to tail off. That slack was nicely picked up by architecture improvements which continue to march forward but add a new layer of complexity in performance optimization and verification. Nick Heaton (Distinguished Engineer and Verification Architect at… Read More
Anirudh Fireside Chats with Jensen and Cristiano
At CadenceLIVE 2024 Anirudh Devgan (President and CEO of Cadence) hosted two fireside chats, one with Jensen Huang (President and CEO of NVIDIA) and one with Cristiano Amon (President and CEO of Qualcomm). As you would expect both discussions were engaging and enlightening. What follows are my takeaways from those chats.
Anirudh
… Read MoreAn Enduring Growth Challenge for Formal Verification
A high-quality verification campaign including methods able to absolutely prove the correctness of critical design behaviors as a complement to mainstream dynamic verification? At first glance this should be a no-brainer. Formal verification offers that option and formal adoption has been growing steadily, now used in around… Read More
Anirudh Keynote at CadenceLIVE 2024. Big Advances, Big Goals
The great things about CEO keynotes, at least from larger companies, is that you not only learn about recent advances but you also get a sense of the underlying algorithm for growth. Particularly reinforced when followed by discussions with high profile partner CEOs on their directions and areas of common interest. I saw this recently… Read More
More Headwinds – CHIPS Act Chop? – Chip Equip Re-Shore? Orders Canceled & Fab Delay