In April I attended and blogged about a webinar on MEMS and IC co-design hosted by two EDA companies: SoftMEMS and Tanner EDA. On October 30th you can attend a full-day event in Israel that is more comprehensive than the webinar that I attended.… Read More
Author: Daniel Payne
A Brief History of Aldec
Dr. Stanley Hyduke founded Aldecin 1984 and their first product was delivered in 1985, named SUSIE (Standard Universal Simulator for Improved Engineering), a gate-level, DOS-based simulator. The SUSIE simulator was priced lower than other EDA vendor tools from the big three: Daisy, Mentor and Valid (aka DMV). Aldec maintains… Read More
Multi-Voltage IC Design Flow
My new iPad lasts about 10 hours on a single charge and the A5X processor is designed with a 45nm process from Samsung. Processor chips for tablets like this use a multi-voltage IC design flow to reduce total power by:… Read More
Designing with FinFETs
Intel is the number one semiconductor company in the world and has taken the lead in bringing FinFET (aka Tri-Gate) silicon to market at the 22nm node starting in May 2011, so now we see the pure play foundries playing catch-up and start talking about their own FinFET roadmaps. IC designers and layout engineers want to know how their… Read More
EDA User: Rafaela Novais from TowerJazz Semi
While reading an article on DeepChip I found an interesting comment from Rafaela Novais, a Design Support Manager at TowerJazz Semi and decided to interview her to learn more about her experience as an IC designer and EDA tool user.
EDA Solutions at Ultra Low Power Developer Forum Demonstrates Mixed-Signal Flow including Tools from Tanner EDA, Incentia and Aldec
EDA Solutions, sole representative in Europe for Tanner EDA and Incentia Design Systems, is exhibiting at the ‘Design & Elektronik’ Developer Forum on Ultra Low Power in Munich, Germany, on October 10, 2012, at the Holiday Inn (Munich – City Centre).
EDA Solutions will be presenting its complete analog, digital and… Read More
EDAC Reports Upbeat Q2 2012 Revenues
EDA revenues for Q2 2012 were up 10.8% compared to Q2 2011 as reported by EDAC today.
Increasing
- CAE
- IC Physical Design & Verification
- Semi IP
High Frequency Analysis of IC Layouts
IC designers of passive devices often use empirical approaches to perform High Frequency Analysis (HFA), however there is at least one new approach being offered by Mentor Graphics using a tool flow of:
- Device detection and extraction with Calibre LVS and Calibre PERC
- Interconnect RLC extraction with Calibre xRC, Calibre xACT-3D
User Review: iOS 6 on iPad
Much has been written about the new iPhone 5 and iOS 6 in terms of the features, specifications, bill of materials, and chips used in the design. Today I’ll share my experiences of actually using the new iOS 6 on iPad as an EDA blogger.
Upgrading to iOS6
Clicking the On button and noticing that the App Store icon has something new,… Read More
A Brief History of RTL Design
RTL is an acronym for Register Transfer Level and refers to a level of hardware design abstraction using Registers and logic gates. Here’s an example schematic showing one DFF as a register, and one inverter as a logic gate.
Figure 1: RTL diagram of a DFF (D Flip Flop) and Inverter… Read More
More Headwinds – CHIPS Act Chop? – Chip Equip Re-Shore? Orders Canceled & Fab Delay