TSMC has been offering foundry services since 1987, and their first 3nm node was called N3 and debuted in 2022; now they have an enhanced 3nm node dubbed N3E that has launched. Every new node then requires IP that is carefully designed, characterized and validated in silicon to ensure that the IP specifications are being met and … Read More
Author: Daniel Payne
TSMC N3E is ready for designs, thanks to IP from Synopsys
AI for the design of Custom, Analog Mixed-Signal ICs
Custom and Analog-Mixed Signal (AMS) IC design are used when the highest performance is required, and using digital standard cells just won’t meet the requirements. Manually sizing schematics, doing IC layout, extracting parasitics, then measuring the performance only to go back and continue iterating is a long, tedious… Read More
Version Control, Data and Tool Integration, Collaboration
As a follow up from my #60DAC visit with Simon Rance of Keysight I was invited to their recent webinar, Unveiling the Secrets to Proper Version Control, Seamless Data and Tool Integration, and Effective Collaboration. Karim Khalfan, Director of Solutions Engineering, Data & IP Management was the webinar presenter.
Modern… Read More
Power Analysis from Software to Architecture to Signoff
SoC designs use many levels of design abstraction during their journey from ideation to implementation, and now it’s possible to perform power analysis quite early in the design process. I had a call with William Ruby, Director of Porduct Marketing – Synopsys Low Power Solution to hear what they’ve engineered… Read More
Rad Hard Circuit Design and Optimization for Space Applications
The Brazilian Ministry of Science and Technology (MCTIC) has a research unit, Renato Archer Information Technology Center (CTI), and two of their IC engineers presented at the MunEDA User Group meeting this May on the topic of designing Latching Current Limiter (LCL) circuits for space applications with RHBD (radiation-hardened… Read More
RISC-V 64 bit IP for High Performance
RISC-V as an Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) has grown quickly in commercial importance and relevance since its release to the open community in 2015, attracting many IP vendors that now provide a variety of RTL cores. Roger Espasa, CEO and Founder of Semidynamics, has presented at RISC-V events on how their IP is customized… Read More
Visit with Easy-Logic at #60DAC
I had read a little about Easy-Logic before #60DAC, so this meeting on Wednesday in Moscone West was my first in-person meeting with Jimmy Chen and Kager Tsai to learn about their EDA tools and where they fit into the overall IC design flow. A Functional Engineering Change Order (ECO) is a way to revise an IC design by updating the smallest… Read More
Empyrean visit at #60DAC
I arrived for my #60DAC booth appointment at Empyrean and was able to watch a customer presentation from Jason Guo, of Diodes. Jason was talking about how his company used the Patron tool for EM/IR analysis on their automotive chips. Diodes was found back in 1959 at Plano, Texas, and has since grown into 32 locations around the globe,… Read More
#60DAC Update from Arteris
I met up with Andy Nightingale, VP Product Marketing and Michal Siwinski, Chief Marketing Officer of Arteris at #60DAC for an update on their system IP company dealing with SoCs and chiplet-based designs. SemiWiki has been blogging about Arteris since 2011, and the company has grown enough in those 12 years to have an IPO, see their… Read More
Cadence and AI at #60DAC
Paul Cunningham from Cadence presented at the #60DAC Pavilion and gave one of the most optimistic visions of AI applied to EDA that I’ve witnessed, so hopefully I can convey some of his enthusiasm and outright excitement in my blog report. Mr. Cunningham reviewed the various ages of EDA design with each era providing about… Read More
Real men have fabs!