Carl Icahn Blinks in Bid for Mentor Graphics

Carl Icahn Blinks in Bid for Mentor Graphics
by Daniel Payne on 05-02-2012 at 3:42 pm

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One year ago activist investor Carl Icahn started a hostile takeover bid for Mentor Graphics and was able to offer up three new board members, however yesterday we read that Mentor Graphics will:

  • Have their annual shareholder meeting on May 30th
  • Two of Icahn’s board members are not on the roster for renewal
  • Mr. Icahn has no
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IC design at 20nm with TSMC and Synopsys

IC design at 20nm with TSMC and Synopsys
by Daniel Payne on 05-02-2012 at 10:25 am

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While the debate rages on about 28nm yield at foundry juggernaut TSMC, on Monday I attended a webinar on 20nm IC design hosted by TSMC and Synopsys. Double Patterning Technology (DPT) becomes a requirement for several layers of your 20nm IC design which then impact many of your EDA tools and methodology.… Read More


Book Review – Quantum Physics: A Beginner’s Guide

Book Review – Quantum Physics: A Beginner’s Guide
by Daniel Payne on 04-30-2012 at 8:00 am

It’s been 34 years since I graduated from the University of Minnesota with a degree in Electrical Engineering so I was curious about what has changed in quantum physics since then. Alastair Rae is the UK-based author who wrote the book – Quantum Physics: A Beginner’s Guide. I read this on my Kindle Touch e-book… Read More


IC Reliability and Prevention During Design with EDA Tools

IC Reliability and Prevention During Design with EDA Tools
by Daniel Payne on 04-27-2012 at 5:04 pm

IC device physics uncovers limits to reliable operation, so IC designers are learning to first identify and then fix reliability issues prior to tape-out. Here’ s a list of reliability issues to keep you awake at night:… Read More


AMS Design using Co-Simulation

AMS Design using Co-Simulation
by Daniel Payne on 04-23-2012 at 11:13 am

The big three vendors in EDA offer AMS simulation tools but what about simulation choices from other EDA vendors?

It turns out there are two privately held EDA companies that have done business since the 1980’s and have just integrated a Verilog A simulator with a SPICE circuit simulator. The two companies are Aldec with a … Read More


Milestones to Building a Successful Technology Software Company

Milestones to Building a Successful Technology Software Company
by Daniel Payne on 04-19-2012 at 11:04 pm

May 31, 2012 at Silicon Valley Bank, Santa Clara, CA

Join us on May 31, 2012 for the first in a series of conversations exploring concepts and best practices for emerging companies. The first conversation will outline the critical milestones which must be conquered to take a start-up from early stages to a strong, growing, sustainable… Read More


Analog Circuit Optimization

Analog Circuit Optimization
by Daniel Payne on 04-18-2012 at 2:06 pm

Gim Tan at Magma did a webinar on analog circuit optimization, so I watched it today to see what I could learn about their approach. Gim is a Staff AE, so not much marketing fluff to wade through in this webinar.

The old way of designing custom analog circuits involves many tedious and error prone iterations between front-end (Schematic… Read More


Changing your IC Layout Methodology to Manage Layout Dependent Effects (LDE)

Changing your IC Layout Methodology to Manage Layout Dependent Effects (LDE)
by Daniel Payne on 04-18-2012 at 12:38 pm

Smaller IC nodes bring new challenges to the art of IC layout for AMS designs, like Layout Dependent Effects (LDE). If your custom IC design flow looks like the diagram below then you’re in for many time-consuming iterations because where you place each transistor will impact the actual Vt and Idsat values, which are now a … Read More


Soft Error Rate (SER) Prediction Software for IC Design

Soft Error Rate (SER) Prediction Software for IC Design
by Daniel Payne on 04-16-2012 at 10:00 am

My first IC design in 1978 was a 16Kb DRAM chip at Intel and our researchers discovered the strange failure of Soft Errors caused by Alpha particles in the packaging and neutron particles which are more prominent at higher altitudes like in Denver, Colorado. Before today if you wanted to know the Soft Error Rate (SER) you had to fabricate… Read More