I first met Herve Guegan at Mentor Graphics back in the late 90’s when he managed a group of developers for the SPICE circuit simulator called Eldo in Grenoble, France. We’ve kept in touch over the years and he asked to meet me at DAC in Austin this year, so I caught up with him to get an update on his latest start-up company… Read More
Author: Daniel Payne
5 Reasons Why Platform Based Design Can Help Your Next SoC
Semiconductor design IP and verification IP have been around for decades, but just because your company has lots of IP doesn’t mean that you’re getting all of the benefits of a design reuse methodology. Maybe your business has encountered some of the following issues:
EDA Tool for ATPG – Refactor or Rewrite?
In the life of all EDA software tools comes that moment when new requirements make developers stop and ask, should I continue to refactor the existing code or just start all over from scratch using a new approach? Synopsys came to that junction point when ATPG run times were reaching days or even weeks on the largest IC designs, something… Read More
A Brief History of Platform Design Automation
Two weeks ago I spoke on the phone with Albert Li, Founder and CEO of Platform DA about his EDA company. Prior to founding Platform DA in Beijing, Li worked at Accelicon which was acquired by Agilent in December 2011. Mr. Li graduated from Tsinghua University and Vanderbilt University, both in Electrical Engineering, and has written… Read More
Circuit Simulation Panel Discussion at #53DAC
Four panelists from big-name semiconductor design companies spoke about their circuit simulation experiences at #53DAC in Austin this year, so I attended to learn more about SPICE and Fast SPICE circuit simulation. I heard from the following four companies:… Read More
Two New Announcements from Tanner EDA at #53DAC
Most mergers and acquisitions in the EDA world simply don’t work out financially a year or two after the deal is done, however I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Tanner EDA is doing quite well at #53DAC this year after the acquisition by Mentor Graphics back in March 2015. Everyone that I’ve been meeting with at … Read More
Bridging the Gap between Foundry and IC Design at #53DAC
In our semiconductor ecosystem we often specialize the engineers and therefore EDA tools into separate silos like Foundry, front-end design, back-end design, tapeout, etc. What I discovered at #53DAC a few weeks ago was that some EDA companies actually bridge the gap between foundry engineers and IC designers with their tools.… Read More
Semiconductor IP QA Standards Get a Boost at #53DAC
At the #53DAC earlier this month held in Austin, Texas I met up with Renee Donkers, the founder of Fractal Technologies. His company has been focused on improving the quality of semiconductor IP cells through the use of automated checking software. The highest area of growth in EDA as measured by the ESD Alliance is in the reusable… Read More
IC Designers talk about 28nm to 7nm challenges at #53DAC
IC design challenges are different at advanced nodes like 7nm, so to learn more about the topic I attended a panel luncheon at DAC sponsored by Cadence. The moderator was both funny and technically astute, quite the rare combination, so kudos to Professor Rob Rutenbar, a former Neolinear guy now at the University of Illinois. Panelists… Read More
Custom IC Layout Design at #53DAC
Last week at the #53DAC conference there was a lot of excitement in the air about custom IC design, especially at the luncheon that I attended on Tuesday from Synopsys where they had customers like STMicroelectronics, GSI Technology, Samsung Foundry and the Synopsys IP group talk about their experiences using the new Custom Compiler… Read More
CES 2026 and all things Cycling