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


Quantum Computing – A Quick Review

Quantum Computing – A Quick Review
by Bernard Murphy on 02-09-2016 at 4:00 pm

This topic comes up periodically but for me had always been one of those things I’d get around to understanding better someday. A recent blog in SemiWiki got me looking a little harder and determined to write a blog to get this out of my system, if for no other reason than getting rid of excess tabs on my browser. So here’s my quick review.… Read More


Complexity And Security

Complexity And Security
by Bernard Murphy on 02-08-2016 at 7:00 am

From time to time when talking about security, it is useful to look at the big picture, but not to further lament the imminent collapse of the sky. We all know that the problem is big and we’re really not on top of it. A more productive discussion would be about what we can do to reduce the scope of the problem. And that has to start … Read More


Supernovae and Safety

Supernovae and Safety
by Bernard Murphy on 02-05-2016 at 7:00 am

Whenever we push the bounds of reliability in any domain, we run into new potential sources of error. Perhaps not completely new, but rather concerns new to that domain. That’s the case for Single Event Upsets (SEUs) which are radiation-triggered bit-flips, and Single Event Transients (SETs) which are radiation-triggered pulses… Read More