Semiconductor, EDA Industries Maturing? Wally Disagrees

Semiconductor, EDA Industries Maturing? Wally Disagrees
by Bernard Murphy on 05-22-2018 at 7:00 am

Wally Rhines (President and CEO of Mentor, A Siemens Business) has been pushing a contrarian view versus the conventional wisdom that the semiconductor business, and by extension EDA, is slowing down. He pitched this at DVCon and more recently at U2U where I got to hear the pitch and talk to him afterwards.


What causes maturing is… Read More


Retooling Implementation for Hot Applications

Retooling Implementation for Hot Applications
by Bernard Murphy on 05-17-2018 at 7:00 am

It might seem I am straying from my normal beat in talking about implementation; after all, I normally write on systems, applications and front-end design. But while I’m not an expert in implementation, I was curious to understand how the trending applications of today (automotive, AI, 5G, IoT, etc.) create new demands on implementation,… Read More


Webinar: Thermal and Reliability for ADAS and Autonomy

Webinar: Thermal and Reliability for ADAS and Autonomy
by Bernard Murphy on 05-15-2018 at 7:00 am

OK, so maybe the picture here is a little over the top, but thermal and reliability considerations in automotive in general and in ADAS and autonomy in particular, are no joke. Overheating, thermal-induced EM and warping at the board-level, in the package or interposers, are concerns in any environment but especially when you’re… Read More


Low Power Verification Shifting Left

Low Power Verification Shifting Left
by Bernard Murphy on 05-08-2018 at 11:00 pm

I normally think of shift left as a way to move functional verification earlier in design, to compress the overall design cycle. But it can also make sense in other contexts, one particularly important example being power intent verification.

If you know anything about power intent, you know that it affects pretty much all aspects… Read More


Formal Signoff – a Cisco Perspective

Formal Signoff – a Cisco Perspective
by Bernard Murphy on 05-08-2018 at 7:00 am

The second segment of Oski’s most recent “Decoding Formal” event was a talk by Anatoli Sokhatski (formal tech lead at Cisco) on training and methodology development for a structured and scalable approach to formal verification, particularly with emphasis on formal signoff.

Anatoli stressed that he and others in the team did … Read More


Peering Over the Timing Edge

Peering Over the Timing Edge
by Bernard Murphy on 05-03-2018 at 7:00 am

I wrote recently about a yield problem which mobile vendors have been finding for devices built in advanced technologies. This was a performance issue (the devices worked fine at lower clock speeds), pointing to a discrepancy in some devices between predicted and observed timing. These were experienced design teams, using state… Read More


ARM IoT Mbed Update

ARM IoT Mbed Update
by Bernard Murphy on 05-01-2018 at 7:00 am

Normally press release events with ARM tend to be somewhat arms-length – a canned pitch followed by limited time for Q&A. Through a still unexplained calendar glitch I missed a scheduled call for a recent announcement. To make up I had the pleasure of a 1-on-1 with Hima Mukkamala, GM of IoT cloud services at ARM. Hima is a heavy … Read More


Safety in the Interconnect

Safety in the Interconnect
by Bernard Murphy on 04-26-2018 at 7:00 am

Safety is a big deal these days, not only in automotive applications, but also in critical infrastructure and industrial applications (the power grid, nuclear reactors and spacecraft, to name just a few compelling examples). We generally understand that functional blocks like CPUs and GPUs have to be safe, but what about the … Read More


Functional Safety in Delhi Traffic

Functional Safety in Delhi Traffic
by Bernard Murphy on 04-24-2018 at 7:00 am

While at DVCon I talked to Apurva Kalia (VP R&D in the System and Verification group at Cadence). He introduced me to the ultimate benchmark test for self-driving – an autonomous 3-wheeler driving in Delhi traffic. If you’ve never visited India, the traffic there is quite an experience. Vehicles of every type pack the roads … Read More


Meltdown, Spectre and Formal

Meltdown, Spectre and Formal
by Bernard Murphy on 04-19-2018 at 7:00 am

Once again Oski delivered in their most recent Decoding Formal session, kicking off with a talk on the infamous Meltdown and Spectre bugs and possible relevance of formal methods in finding these and related problems. So far I haven’t invested much effort in understanding these beyond a hand-waving “cache and speculative execution”… Read More