The press has been buzzing about 3D everything for the past few years, so when it comes to IC design it’s a fair question to ask how would you actually extract 3D IC structures for use by analysis tools like a circuit simulator. I read a white paper by Christen Decoin and Vassilis Kourkoulos of Mentor Graphics this week and became… Read More
Author: Daniel Payne
An Approach to 20nm IC Design
Last month at DAC I learned how IBM, Cadence, ARM, GLOBALFOUNDRIES and Samsung approach the challenges of SoC design, EDA design and fabrication at the 20nm node. Today I followed up by reading a white paper on 20nm IC design challenges authored by Cadence, a welcome relief to the previous marketing mantra of EDA 360.
Here’s… Read More
Using Synopsys Analysis Tools for AMS Design
I attended the Synopsys webinar today for a tool called Custom Explorer Ultra (CXU). Product details on the Synopsys web site are here. The CXU tool would be used by AMS designers that want to setup, control and view results from simulators like HSPICE, CustomSim or VCS on transistor-level and AMS designs.… Read More
SPICE Timing Correlation for IC Place and Route
SPICE circuit simulation is used for transistor-level analysis while Place and Route tools are typically used to connect cells and blocks of an SoC, so why would there be a connection between these two EDA tools?
I read a press release today from ATopTech and Berkeley Design Automation that talked about how SPICE and P&R are … Read More
IC Design at Novocell Semiconductor
In my circuit design past I did DRAM work at Intel, so I was interested in learning more about Novocell Semiconductor and their design of One Time Programmable (OTP) IP. Walter Novosell is the President/CTO of Novocell and talked with me by phone on Thursday.… Read More
Managing Differences with Schematic-Based IC Design
At DAC in June I didn’t get a chance to visit ClioSoft for a product update so instead I read their white paper this week, “The Power of Visual Diff for Schematics & Layouts“. My background is transistor-level IC design so anything with schematics is familiar and interesting.
The Challenge
Hand-crafted … Read More
Robustness, Reliability and Yield at DAC
On Wednesday at DAC I met with Bob Slee, distributor and Michael Siu, AE for MunEDA to get an update on what’s new. MunEDA has EDA software for:
- Schematic porting
- Nominal circuit analysis
- Nominal circuit optimization
- Statistical circuit analysis
- Statistical circuit optimization
- IP porting
- Circuit model generation
Methodics update at DAC
Fergus Slorach, CTO and Founder of Methodics met with me at DAC on Wednesday afternoon to provide an update on software configuration management for hardware designers.… Read More
Photo and Video Overview of DAC 2012
Sunday Night – you have to network at the EDAC kick-off party.… Read More
Analog FastSPICE update at DAC
Paul Estrada, COO of Berkeley DA met with me on the final day of DAC to provide an update. BDA coined the phrase Analog FastSPICE and have continued to dominate that market segment in the world of SPICE circuit simulators.… Read More
Unlocking the cloud: A new era for post-tapeout flow for semiconductor manufacturing