Simulating Full-System EMI for a Car in Just 28 Minutes

Simulating Full-System EMI for a Car in Just 28 Minutes
by Bernard Murphy on 10-23-2015 at 8:00 pm

While there’s a lot of cool technology in modern semiconductors, it’s important to raise our sights periodically to understand how well these chips will work in the systems for which they are designed. One area driving a lot of semiconductor growth is automobile electronics. We’ve had drive-train control forever it seems, but… Read More


About That Landauer Limit…

About That Landauer Limit…
by Bernard Murphy on 10-19-2015 at 12:00 pm

You may have heard of the Landauer principle or the Landauer limit. This defines a lower bound on switching power dissipation in any form of digital circuit. Rolf Landauer first presented this principle in 1961, while working at IBM. It’s not limited by how the circuit is built – you can use FinFETS or spintronics or even dilithium… Read More


A Connectivity Verification Idea

A Connectivity Verification Idea
by Bernard Murphy on 10-14-2015 at 4:00 pm


A Wirble

In case you hadn’t noticed, I like to write from time to time about EDA product ideas. I assume these are somewhat original, but given the maxim “there’s nothing new under the sun…”, I may well be wrong. In any event, I like to share these ideas if only to demonstrate that innovation in EDA is not stalled because we’ve run out big,… Read More


SpyGlass World at Levi Stadium, October 21st

SpyGlass World at Levi Stadium, October 21st
by Bernard Murphy on 10-12-2015 at 2:00 pm

I suppose you might have something better to do next Wednesday but, seriously, it had better be pretty good. I admit I’m biased (I was the Atrenta CTO until very recently) but even given that and mixing metaphors, Atrenta really knocked it out of the park when they got the 49er stadium for their User Group meetings. You don’t have to … Read More


Applying EDA Concepts Outside Chip Design

Applying EDA Concepts Outside Chip Design
by Bernard Murphy on 10-11-2015 at 7:00 am

(I changed the title of this piece as an experiment) Paul McLellan recently wrote on the topic of new ventures crossing the chasm (getting from initial but bounded success to a proven scalable business). That got me to thinking about the EDA market in general. In some ways it has a similar problem, stuck at $5B or so and single-digit… Read More


7 Deadly Sins in Product Strategy for EDA Startups

7 Deadly Sins in Product Strategy for EDA Startups
by Bernard Murphy on 09-20-2015 at 7:00 am

If you google “7 deadly sins of startups” you get lots of hits on mistakes for social networking ventures, only a few of which are relevant to EDA startups. In EDA you have to demonstrate real growth quickly with a very tech-savvy audience in a handful of bluechip accounts. So throw away the research you did on the web because it isn’t… Read More


On The Beauty Of Turkey Vultures

On The Beauty Of Turkey Vultures
by Bernard Murphy on 09-09-2015 at 12:00 pm

Now and again I like to switch from technical topics and write about something good for the soul. I’m involved with a wildlife rescue organization; we take orphaned and injured birds (generally found by members of the public), nurse them back to health and release them back into the wild. We have permits all the way up to the federal… Read More


A Security Idea for EDA / Embedded Design

A Security Idea for EDA / Embedded Design
by Bernard Murphy on 08-25-2015 at 4:00 pm

I’m on a mission to find novel ideas for EDA / embedded design tools. One I have been discussing on and off with a DARPA friend for at least a couple of years is how to grade the security of a hardware design or, more comprehensively, the security of an embedded system including hardware and the software running on the hardware.

This feels… Read More