Checking Clock Gating Equivalence the Easy Way

Checking Clock Gating Equivalence the Easy Way
by Bernard Murphy on 07-14-2017 at 7:00 am

Synopsys just delivered a Webinar on using the sequential equivalence app (SEQ) in their VC Formal product to check that clock-gating didn’t mess up the functional intent of your RTL. This webinar is one in a series on VC Formal, designed to highlight the wide range of capabilities Synopsys has to offer in formal verification. They… Read More


Rob Bates on Safety and ISO26262

Rob Bates on Safety and ISO26262
by Bernard Murphy on 07-12-2017 at 7:00 am

Most of us would agree that safety is important in transportation and most of us know that in automotive electronics this means ISO26262 compliance. But, except for the experts, the details don’t make for an especially gripping read. I thought it would be interesting to get behind the process to better understand the motivation,… Read More


Cadence Explores Smarter Verification

Cadence Explores Smarter Verification
by Bernard Murphy on 07-10-2017 at 7:00 am

Verification as an effectively unbounded problem will always stir debate on ways to improve. A natural response is to put heavy emphasis on making existing methods faster and more seamless. That’s certainly part of continuous improvement but sometimes we also need to step back and ask the bigger questions – what is sufficient … Read More


Webinar: Synopsys on Clock Gating Verification with VC Formal

Webinar: Synopsys on Clock Gating Verification with VC Formal
by Bernard Murphy on 07-06-2017 at 12:00 pm

Clock gating is arguably the mostly widely-used design method to reduce power since it is broadly applicable even when more sophisticated methods like power islands are ruled out. But this style can be fraught with hazards even for careful designers. When you start with a proven-correct logic design and add clock gating, the logic… Read More


Safety EDA

Safety EDA
by Bernard Murphy on 06-23-2017 at 7:00 am

It takes courage and perhaps even a little insanity to start a new EDA venture these days – unless you have a decently differentiated value proposition in a hot market. One company that caught my eye, Austemper, seems to measure up to these standards (though I can’t speak to the insanity part). They offer EDA tooling specifically… Read More


Can AI be Conscious?

Can AI be Conscious?
by Bernard Murphy on 06-21-2017 at 7:00 am

A little self-indulgence for the season, to lighten the relentless diet of DAC updates. I found a recent Wired article based on a TED talk on consciousness. The speaker drew a conclusion that consciousness was not something that could ever be captured in a machine and was a unique capability of living creatures (or at least humans).… Read More


Accurate Power Sooner

Accurate Power Sooner
by Bernard Murphy on 06-20-2017 at 7:00 am

Synopsys PrimeTime PX, popularly known as PT-PX, is widely recognized as the gold standard for power signoff. Calculation is based on a final gate-level netlist reflecting final gate selections and either approximate interconnect parasitics or final parasitics based on the post-layout netlist. The only way to get more accurate… Read More


Design Deconstruction

Design Deconstruction
by Bernard Murphy on 06-19-2017 at 7:00 am

It is self-evident that large systems of any type would not be possible without hierarchical design. Decomposing a large system objective into subsystems, and subsystems of subsystems, has multiple benefits. Smaller subsystems can be more easily understood and better tested when built, robust 3[SUP]rd[/SUP] party alternatives… Read More


DAC 2017 Review

DAC 2017 Review
by Bernard Murphy on 06-15-2017 at 7:00 am

DAC is coming, next week, in beautiful downtown Austin at the Convention Center. I’ll be there Monday and Tuesday, running around the exhibit area. If you haven’t yet got your plane and hotel tickets, drop everything and start looking. I’m guessing this will be as popular as it always is, especially given the venue. I know of multiple… Read More


Visual Quality

Visual Quality
by Bernard Murphy on 06-12-2017 at 7:00 am

A few years ago, I started looking at data visualization methods as a way to make sense of large quantities of complex data. This is a technique that has become very popular in big data analytics where it is effectively impossible to see patterns in data in any other way. There are vast numbers of different types of diagram – treemap,… Read More