Fast Monte Carlo and Analog Fast SPICE

Fast Monte Carlo and Analog Fast SPICE
by Daniel Payne on 06-08-2012 at 10:25 am

Britto Vincent of ProPlus Design Solutions met with me at DAC on Monday morning to talk about Design For Yield (DFY) and Analog Fast SPICE.

In 2011 ProPlus announced DFY tools where the technology came from IBM, it provides fast Monte Carlo results up to 3 sigma, then added NanoSpice for faster simulation results. Similar in approach… Read More


Collaboration at 28nm, 20nm and 14nm

Collaboration at 28nm, 20nm and 14nm
by Daniel Payne on 06-06-2012 at 11:23 am


Wednesday morning I attended a panel discussion with: ARM, IBM, Cadence, GLOBALFOUNDRIES and Samsung.

The panelists all sang the same song of collaboration between EDA, IP and Foundry to enable 28nm, 20nm and even 14nm.… Read More


Two New Board Members at Mentor Graphics

Two New Board Members at Mentor Graphics
by Daniel Payne on 05-30-2012 at 1:25 pm

One year ago the annual share holder meeting at Mentor Graphics had tight security, a no-camera policy, and the drama of Carl Icahn the corporate raider successfully adding three new board members. Fast forward to today where two of Icahn’s board members were not even nominated, and Mentor added two new board members. I chatted… Read More


SystemVerilog 2012 at DAC

SystemVerilog 2012 at DAC
by Daniel Payne on 05-29-2012 at 3:59 pm

I first met Stuart at Mentor Graphics back in 1995 or so, and he is one of the most knowledgable persons around for all things Verilog.


Stuart Sutherland is the editor for the IEEE 1800 SystemVerilog standard, so if you’re attending DAC and care about SystemVerilog then consider attending the Birds of a Feather meeting held… Read More


3D Transistors and IC Extraction Tools

3D Transistors and IC Extraction Tools
by Daniel Payne on 05-24-2012 at 4:05 pm

Have you ever heard of a Super Pillar Transistor? It’s one of many emerging 3D transistor types, like Intel’s popular FinFET device.

In the race to continuously improve MOS transistors, these new 3D transistor structures pose challenges to the established IC extraction tool flows.

Foundries have to provide an Effective… Read More


Analog FastSPICE added to Tanner EDA

Analog FastSPICE added to Tanner EDA
by Daniel Payne on 05-24-2012 at 10:18 am

Last year when I visited Tanner EDA at DAC I heard about how they integrated the Analog FastSPICE circuit simulator from Berkeley DA.

This made sense to me because BDA has a good reputation for speeding up SPICE without compromising on accuracy, and Tanner users may want to mix and match tools from multiple EDA vendors.

This year they’ve… Read More


Aldec and Tanner EDA at DAC

Aldec and Tanner EDA at DAC
by Daniel Payne on 05-18-2012 at 10:19 am

In April I blogged about a webinar on co-simulation hosted by Aldec and Tanner EDA where they showed how the RTL simulator (Riviera PRO) and SPICE simulator (T-Spice) had been connected together for IC designers wanting to do real AMS simulations.

The availability date of the co-simulation wasn’t clear, so today the pressRead More