TCAD to SPICE Simulation of Power Devices

TCAD to SPICE Simulation of Power Devices
by Daniel Payne on 08-31-2014 at 1:30 pm

The periodic table shows that Silicon (Si) is in a column along with other elements like Carbon (C) and Germanium (Ge). With so much emphasis on Silicon, you’d think that the other semiconductor materials have been neglected a bit.

Silicon is a wonderful material and most of our consumer electronics and handheld devices … Read More


Assertion Synthesis: From Startup to Mainstream

Assertion Synthesis: From Startup to Mainstream
by Daniel Payne on 08-30-2014 at 7:00 am

In college many of us dreamed of starting up our own company by offering something new that has never been done before. Today I spoke by phone with Yunshan Zhuin Shanghai, and he has actually lived out this scenario by founding NextOp in 2006, then getting that company acquired by Atrentain 2012. The new capability that NextOp created… Read More


FinFET Design for Power, Noise and Reliability

FinFET Design for Power, Noise and Reliability
by Daniel Payne on 08-29-2014 at 4:00 pm

IC designers have been running analysis tools for power, noise and reliability for many years now, so what is new when you start using FinFET transistors instead of planar transistors? Calvin Chow from ANSYS (Apache Design) presented on this topic earlier in the summer through a 33 minutewebinar that has been archived. There is… Read More


Transistor-level Sizing Optimization

Transistor-level Sizing Optimization
by Daniel Payne on 08-29-2014 at 4:00 pm

RTL designers know that their code gets transformed into gates and cells by using a logic synthesis tool, however these gates and cells are further comprised of transistors and sometimes you really need to optimize the transistor sizing to reach power, performance and area goals. I’ve done transistor-level IC design before,… Read More


FinFETs for your Next SoC

FinFETs for your Next SoC
by Daniel Payne on 08-24-2014 at 7:00 am

Planar CMOS processes have been offered for decades now, and all the way down through the 28nm node it has been riding the benefits of Moore’s Law. A few years back we started hearing from Intel about TriGate (aka FinFET) starting at the 22nm node as a way to use a more 3D processing approach for transistors instead of planar CMOS.… Read More


IoT Application: Road Biking Fitness

IoT Application: Road Biking Fitness
by Daniel Payne on 08-10-2014 at 8:00 pm

Eleven months ago I started a fitness kick in order to lose some weight, get healthy and have more energy, so I picked a familiar activity, road cycling. Being an engineer I have always loved measuring things, like my speed and distance, however I had an old-fashioned cyclocomputer called the Cateye Velo 2. This device connected … Read More


Speeding up IP and Data Management

Speeding up IP and Data Management
by Daniel Payne on 08-09-2014 at 8:00 am

IP and Data Management (DM) for SoC teams has gradually moved from ad-hoc approaches using simple Excel spreadsheets, to home-grown software that is specific to a project or company, and finally to commercially supported tools. One such commercial toolset for IP lifecycle management is from Methodics, named ProjectICRead More


IO Design Optimization Flow for Reliability in 28nm

IO Design Optimization Flow for Reliability in 28nm
by Daniel Payne on 07-31-2014 at 5:00 pm

User group meetings are a rich source of information for IC designers because they have actual designers talking about how they used EDA tools in their methodology to achieve a goal. Engineers at STMicroelectronicspresented at a MunEDAUser Group on the topic: I/O Design Optimization Flow For Reliability In Advanced CMOS Nodes.… Read More


Making IP Reuse and SoC Integration Easier

Making IP Reuse and SoC Integration Easier
by Daniel Payne on 07-31-2014 at 2:00 pm

The last graphics chip that I worked on at Intel was functionally simulated with only a tiny display size of 16×16 pixels, because that size allowed a complete regression test to be simulated overnight. Our team designed three major IP blocks: Display Processor, Graphics Processor and Bus Interface Unit. We wanted to also… Read More