Catching IC Manufacturing Defects With Slack-Based Transition Delay Testing

Catching IC Manufacturing Defects With Slack-Based Transition Delay Testing
by Daniel Payne on 07-16-2014 at 3:00 pm

Test engineers are often the unsung heroes in the semiconductor world, because they have the tough job of deciding if each IC is good or bad, while taking the least amount of time on a tester and ensuring that the tests are actually finding and uncovering all manufacturing and process variation defects. Simple stuck-at fault models… Read More


Modeling and Analysis of Single Event Effects (SEE)

Modeling and Analysis of Single Event Effects (SEE)
by Daniel Payne on 07-08-2014 at 4:00 pm

Single Event Effects (SEE) are important because we depend upon our consumer, industrial and aerospace products to work reliably. Protons, electrons, neutrons, or alpha particles may perturb the MOS or bipolar device operation in either a destructive or non-destructive fashion. Galactic cosmic rays are one source of these… Read More


An Approach to Clock Domain Crossing for SoC Designs

An Approach to Clock Domain Crossing for SoC Designs
by Daniel Payne on 07-06-2014 at 12:20 am

Blogger Pawan Fangaria wrote about Clock Domain Crossing(CDC) a few weeks ago, and so I followed up tonight and watched a webinarabout CDC presented by Ravindra Anejaof Atrenta. An RTL design engineer would ultimately want a CDC verification tool that offers:

  • Fast throughput and thoroughness
  • Ability to debug and fix the source
Read More

RTL Signoff Update from #51DAC

RTL Signoff Update from #51DAC
by Daniel Payne on 06-30-2014 at 7:00 pm

In the early days of Customer Owned Tooling (COT) the signoff was done at the GDS II, or physical level. Today, however we see the trend of RTL signoff instead because of the EDA tools and methodology available. At DACearlier this month I met with Piyush Sanchetiof Atrenta to get an update on what’s new with RTL signoff.… Read More


Virtual Prototype Update from #51DAC

Virtual Prototype Update from #51DAC
by Daniel Payne on 06-30-2014 at 12:07 pm

EDA industry pundit Gary Smithhas been talking about the electronics industry adopting an ESL tool flow for decades, so it was my pleasure to speak with Bill Neifertof Carbon Design Systemsat DAC this month because his company has been offering both tools and models that enable a virtual prototyping design flow.… Read More


High Level Synthesis update from #51DAC

High Level Synthesis update from #51DAC
by Daniel Payne on 06-27-2014 at 8:00 pm

Every since Synopsys dominated the logic synthesis market in the 1980’s we’ve had something called HLS – High Level Synthesis, meaning something higher than what Design Compiler can understand as input. At DACthis year I met with Mark Milligan of Calypto to get an update on what’s new with HLS. I first… Read More


Standard Cell, IO and Hard IP Validation update

Standard Cell, IO and Hard IP Validation update
by Daniel Payne on 06-27-2014 at 1:26 pm

Every SoC team uses libraries of cells to get their new product to market quicker: Standard Cells, IO Cells and Hard IP blocks. One immediate question that comes to my mind is, “How clean are these cells?” Validating your cell libraries first makes sense, and will ensure that there are fewer surprises as your chip gets… Read More


IP Management Update at DAC

IP Management Update at DAC
by Daniel Payne on 06-26-2014 at 12:42 pm

To keep track of my business and personal finances I use software from Quicken, but for an SoC with hundreds of IP blocks how do you keep track of everything? The answer is found in the growing field of EDA tools for IP management, and at DACearlier this month I sat down with Neil Handof Methodics to get an update on what the industry trends… Read More


What’s New with Circuit Simulation for Cadence?

What’s New with Circuit Simulation for Cadence?
by Daniel Payne on 06-26-2014 at 11:53 am

Every year at DAC I enjoy making the rounds to see what’s new with SPICE circuit simulators, so on June 3rd I met with Xiuya Liand Dan Zhuof Cadence in San Francisco to get an update about their Spectre tool. There’s plenty of competition in the SPICE area from Mentor Graphics (Analog FastSPICE, Eldo, ADiT), Synopsys … Read More