I’m utterly amazed at how IC-based products are improving our quality of life by implantable devices. The modern day pacemaker has given people added years of life by electrically stimulating the heart. A privately-held company called NeuroPace was founded in Mountain View, California to treat epilepsy by using responsive… Read More
Author: Daniel Payne
ARM SoC Hardening
Last year at DACI discovered a physical IP company called DXCorrthat competed against giant ARM. This year the company has selected a different direction, so I got caught up with Nirmalya Ghosh, the CEO to hear about the changes.
Nirmalya Ghosh, DXCorr
… Read More
Transistor, Gate and RTL Debug Update at DAC
Debugging an IC design at the transistor, Gate and RTL levels is often necessary to meet timing requirements and understand analog or digital behavior, yet the process itself can be a tedious one, filled with manual steps, therefore making it an error-prone process. EDA tools have been created to help us graphically debug transistor,… Read More
Enabling 14nm FinFET Design
There’s never a dull moment in the foundry race to offer FinFET processes that enable leading-edge SoC design. Today I attended a webinar hosted by Samsung and Synopsys on how to enable 14nm FinFET design. The two speakers were Dr. Kuang-Kuo Lin from Samsung and Dr. Henry Sheng from Synopsys.
Dr. Kuang-Kuo Lin, Samsung
Dr.… Read More
Bringing Sanity to Analog IC Design Verification
Two weeks ago I blogged about analog verification and it started a discussion with 16 comments, so l’ve found that our readers have an interest in this topic. For decades now the Digital IC design community has used and benefited from regression testing as a way to measure both design quality and progress, ensuring that first… Read More
IC Place and Route Perspective from Users at DAC
One of the most useful ways to learn about an EDA tool is to talk with other users that have experience with that tool. IC Place and Route tools are complex and yet necessary to implement every SoC designed today, so at DAC in just two weeks you have a chance to hear first-hand from several P&R tool users. To get a better idea about these… Read More
Layout-based ESD Check Methodology with Fast, Full-chip Static and Macro-level Dynamic
Nvidia designs some of the most powerful graphics chips and systems in the world, so I’m always eager to learn more about their IC design methodology. This week I’ve had the chance to talk with Ting Ku, Director of Engineering at Nvidia about his DAC talkin the Apache booth in exactly two weeks from today. Registration… Read More
Transistor-Level Update from Cadence at DAC
My 8 years as an IC circuit designer were at the transistor-level, so if that interests you as well then consider what there is to see from Cadence at DAC this year. IC design technology is changing quickly, so keeping up to date is important for your job security and continual education goals.
Here’s what I would recommend attending… Read More
SoC Optimization Using FPGA Prototyping
As an engineer I learn new concepts best by seeing a demonstration, in this case it was a demo of how to optimize SoC performance by using an ASIC prototyping debug process. SoC designers that use FPGAs to prototype their new ASIC often encounter debug issues, like:
- Limited observability of internal nets required for debug, maybe
RTL Power Estimation at DAC
If you design with ARMCores and need to estimate dynamic power early in the flow, then consider what STMicroelectronics has done with their high performance, power-efficient subsystems. Anne Merlande is a Processor Micro Architecture technical expert, and will be presenting in Booth #1346 at DACon June 4th, 2:00PM. Her topic… Read More
Facing the Quantum Nature of EUV Lithography