Software-Driven Verification and Portable Stimulus

Software-Driven Verification and Portable Stimulus
by Bernard Murphy on 03-15-2016 at 12:00 pm

I was at every single lunch at DVCon, not because the food was that great (it wasn’t bad) but because the topics were all interesting. The Wednesday lunch, hosted by Cadence, was a panel on software-driven verification and portable stimulus, moderated by Frank Schirrmeister (a different role for Frank – he’s usually a panel member… Read More


Verdi Update and NVIDIA on Verification Compiler

Verdi Update and NVIDIA on Verification Compiler
by Bernard Murphy on 03-11-2016 at 12:00 pm

Synopsys hosted a lunch session on Thursday of DVCon. Michael Sanie of Synopsys opened the session, with a look back at the last DVCon where he had talked about Verification Compiler (VC) and extending the platform to Verification Continuum, which adds emulation and FPGA-based prototyping (HAPS – there was a very cool HAPS demo… Read More


Mentor at DVCon – Visualize This

Mentor at DVCon – Visualize This
by Bernard Murphy on 03-10-2016 at 12:00 pm

Steve Bailey entertained us during lunch on Tuesday with a talk on debug and visualization in the Mentor platform. Steve is based in Colorado, so had to spend the first part of his talk gloating about their Super Bowl win, but I guess he deserves that.

On a more technical note, he showed us a familiar survey they had completed with the… Read More


Accellera and Portable Stimulus

Accellera and Portable Stimulus
by Bernard Murphy on 03-08-2016 at 7:00 am

I’ll start with a quick note on DVCon. This seems to be gaining momentum each year. In addition to the events in the US, Europe and India, a DVCon event is now planned for China, kicking off in Shanghai in 2017. At a time when we’re all bemoaning the future of EDA and EDA conferences, DVCon is booming internationally, no doubt reflecting… Read More


Ajoy – History, Perspectives and Crossing the Chasm

Ajoy – History, Perspectives and Crossing the Chasm
by Bernard Murphy on 03-06-2016 at 4:00 pm

EDAC hosted an event at DVCon this week where Jim Hogan interviewed Ajoy Bose (CEO of Atrenta prior to its acquisition by Synopsys). The nominal purpose was to talk about turning a venture into a valuable enterprise. This was covered but, in Jim’s way, it was really a more wide-ranging and personal interview. This is an abstract of… Read More


Life, the Universe and Everything

Life, the Universe and Everything
by Bernard Murphy on 02-28-2016 at 12:00 pm

In Douglas Adams’ iconic series A hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxya super-intelligent species created a super-powerful computer called Deep Thought to answer the ultimate question – what is the meaning of life (and the universe and everything)? Life imitates art so it should come as no surprise that a team in London founded a venture… Read More


A Little More Quantum Computing

A Little More Quantum Computing
by Bernard Murphy on 02-25-2016 at 7:00 am

There’s another domain in Quantum Computing (QC) which periodically attracts headlines – Quantum Key Distribution (QKD). I thought this worth covering because it does not depend on the ability to do parallel computation on superposition states, so may not be as much at the mercy of limited coherence times. And ultimately… Read More


Synopsys at DVCon 2016

Synopsys at DVCon 2016
by Bernard Murphy on 02-23-2016 at 12:00 pm

It’s that time of year again – DVCon starts on Monday Feb 29[SUP]th[/SUP] and as always should be a packed event. Synopsys plans a big showing, in the exhibit hall, in a sponsored lunch, at tutorials and in papers. Time to get your conference shoes on and go check them out – I plan to be there all week.

One of the most obvious things you will… Read More


FinFETs, Power Integrity and Chip/Package Co-design

FinFETs, Power Integrity and Chip/Package Co-design
by Bernard Murphy on 02-18-2016 at 7:00 am

FinFETs have brought a lot of good things to design – higher performance, higher density and lower leakage power – promising to extend Moore’s law for a least a while longer. But inevitably with new advances come new challenges, especially around optimizing for power integrity in these designs.

One of these challenges is… Read More


A Real Engineering Challenge – Artificial Red Blood Cells

A Real Engineering Challenge – Artificial Red Blood Cells
by Bernard Murphy on 02-17-2016 at 7:00 am

When you’re thinking about “what can we do next”, you can think big or you can think small – very, very small. Robert Freitas at the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing (IMM) has such an idea – artificial red blood cells (RBCs). These would be nano-machines which could augment the oxygen and carbon dioxide carrying capacity of … Read More