DAC: Self-driving Cars

DAC: Self-driving Cars
by Paul McLellan on 06-10-2015 at 7:00 am

The keynote on Tuesday at DAC was by Jeffrey Owens of Delphi. For those of you that don’t know, Delphi used to be the part of General Motors dealing with electronics spun out from GM as a separate company in 1999.

Jeffrey pointed out that a modern automobile is the most complex device any of us own, with over 100M lines of code (loc)… Read More


DAC Keynote: Moore’s Law Isn’t Dead

DAC Keynote: Moore’s Law Isn’t Dead
by Paul McLellan on 06-10-2015 at 5:00 am

There were two keynotes at DAC this morning. I think the official designation of the first one was a “visionary talk” and the main difference was that it was only 15 minutes long. Vivek Singh, an Intel fellow, talked about Moore’s Law at 50: No End in Sight.

He started with a graph showing transistor speed versus… Read More


Google Smart Lens: IC Design and Beyond

Google Smart Lens: IC Design and Beyond
by Paul McLellan on 06-09-2015 at 1:00 am

Today’s DAC keynote was by Brian Otis of Google about their project, working with Novartis, to build disposable contact lenses that perform continuous glucose monitoring.

Why is this important? There are 382M people around the world with diabetes who typically have to check their blood glucose levels four times a day. … Read More


Synopsys to Acquire Atrenta

Synopsys to Acquire Atrenta
by Paul McLellan on 06-07-2015 at 11:17 pm

I was at the DAC kickoff this evening in the Intercontinental Hotel. I was talking to Dave DeMaria, the senior marketing guy at Synopsys and he told me of a couple of minor press releases due to hit the wire tomorrow morning, didn’t sound important enough to be blogworthy. Aart was there too although I didn’t speak to him.… Read More


GlobalFoundries Adds RF to 28nm

GlobalFoundries Adds RF to 28nm
by Paul McLellan on 06-05-2015 at 7:00 am

The internet of things (IoT) or internet of everything is a term that is into the red zone on the hype-meter. But it does genuinely have something of substance behind the hype. The thing that is a little deceptive is that the IoT term makes it sound like it is a market, but in fact it is several different markets: medical, automotive, … Read More


Making Things Visible for 25 Years

Making Things Visible for 25 Years
by Paul McLellan on 06-03-2015 at 7:00 am

This year is most notably the 50th anniversary of Moore’s Law. It is also the 25th anniversary of Concept Engineering. They were founded in 1990 in Freiburg Germany. They started by providing automatic schematic generation from netlist. They sold primarily to other EDA companies and to internal development groups in semiconductor… Read More


The Trojan Horse Was Free Too

The Trojan Horse Was Free Too
by Paul McLellan on 06-01-2015 at 7:00 am

Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes. I fear the Greeks especially when bearing gifts. In Virgil’s Aeneid these words are spoken by the Trojan priest Laocoön warning about the wooden horse that the Greeks have offered Troy. But to no avail, Laocoön is slain by serpents and the Trojans bring the horse inside the walls of Troy. Since… Read More


Synopsys Software Integrity: Find All the Bugs

Synopsys Software Integrity: Find All the Bugs
by Paul McLellan on 05-29-2015 at 9:30 am

A couple of days ago Synopsys announced that they were acquiring Quotium’s product Seeker. This is an interactive application security testing (IAST) product. Synopsys are acquiring the product and the R&D team, not the whole of Quotium. The Seeker solution is a pioneering solution for IAST that helps businesses find high-risk… Read More


WarpStor, the Data Tardis: Small on the Outside, Large on the Inside

WarpStor, the Data Tardis: Small on the Outside, Large on the Inside
by Paul McLellan on 05-28-2015 at 7:00 am

There is a data explosion:

  • IBM says that 90% of all data was created in the last 2 years
  • Smartphone processor development requires 100GB of data per engineer
  • Android testing requires 30GB times the number of tests times the number of testers
  • Biotech simulation, game development and more all require enormous amounts of data

This … Read More


FinFET: The Miller’s Tale

FinFET: The Miller’s Tale
by Paul McLellan on 05-27-2015 at 7:00 am

In Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the second of the tales told by the pilgrims is The Miller’s Tale. Since this is a family blog, I’ll leave you to research the tale yourself. But FinFETs hide another Miller’s Tale, due to Miller capacitance, sometimes called the Miller effect. This is significant since in FinFET designs Miller capacitance… Read More