Using IC Data Management Tools and Migrating Vendors

Using IC Data Management Tools and Migrating Vendors
by Daniel Payne on 01-23-2013 at 10:50 am

Non-volatile memory is used in a wide variety of consumer and industrial applications and comes in an array of architectures like Serial Flash and CBRAM (Conductive Bridging RAM). I caught up with Shane Hollmer by phone this week to gain some insight into a recent acquisition of Atmel’s serial flash components, and how that… Read More


Double Patterning for IC Design, Extraction and Signoff

Double Patterning for IC Design, Extraction and Signoff
by Daniel Payne on 01-21-2013 at 3:27 pm

TSMC and Synopsys hosted a webinar in December on this topic of double patterning and how it impacts the IC extraction flow. The 20nm process node has IC layout geometries so closely spaced that the traditional optical-based lithography cannot be used, instead lower layers like Poly and Metal 1 require a new approach of using two… Read More


Is the RTL Design Flow Broken?

Is the RTL Design Flow Broken?
by Daniel Payne on 01-15-2013 at 11:02 am

I’ve taught Verilog classes and used logic synthesis tools for ASIC and FPGA designs, so was interested to hear about Oasys Design Systems. I attended their webinar at 9AM today, so I’ll share what I learned about their approach to logical and physical synthesis. This approach competes with tools like Design CompilerRead More


Online Schematic Capture and SPICE Circuit Simulation

Online Schematic Capture and SPICE Circuit Simulation
by Daniel Payne on 01-04-2013 at 11:33 pm

I love all things SPICE so when I read a tweet tonight from @PartSimI just had to try out their Schematic Capture and SPICE circuit simulator in a browser. The site is www.partsim.com and all you need is a web browser and short registration process, then it’s off to the Examples where I found a simple CMOS inverter and then extended… Read More


Engineer to Engineer, Embedded Instrumentation

Engineer to Engineer, Embedded Instrumentation
by Daniel Payne on 01-03-2013 at 10:28 pm

Last month the folks at Tektronix did something very useful, they invited 30 engineers to talk directly with their chief engineer of embedded instrumentation as part of “Meet the Experts” in Santa Clara, CA.

Brad Quinton, Chief Architect created a new and efficient approach of embedding instrumentation in your … Read More


IP Scoring Using TSMC DFM Kits

IP Scoring Using TSMC DFM Kits
by Daniel Payne on 12-20-2012 at 11:00 am

Design For Manufacturing (DFM) is the art and science of making an IC design yield better in order to receive a higher ROI. Ian Smith, an AE from Mentor in the Calibre group presented a pertinent webinar, IP Scoring Using TSMC DFM Kits. I’ll provide an overview of what I learned at this webinar.… Read More


FinFET Modeling and Extraction at 16-nm

FinFET Modeling and Extraction at 16-nm
by Daniel Payne on 12-18-2012 at 12:05 pm

In 2012 FinFET is one of the most talked about MOS technologies of the year because traditional planar CMOS has slowed down on scaling below the 28nm node. To learn more about FinFET process modeling I attended a Synopsys webinar where Bari Biswas presented for about 42 minutes include a Q&A portion at the end.


Bari Biswas, SynopsysRead More


A Comparison of SemiWiki and DeepChip

A Comparison of SemiWiki and DeepChip
by Daniel Payne on 12-12-2012 at 9:06 pm

An email update from John Cooley at DeepChip this morning prompted the bloggers here at SemiWiki to continue the discussion and point out incorrect data, so that readers realize what is really happening with our media portals as sources of timely and relevant news and opinion. I respect what John Cooley has done with DeepChip over… Read More