SLEC is Not LEC

SLEC is Not LEC
by Paul McLellan on 12-20-2013 at 3:00 pm

One of the questions that Calypto is asked all the time is what is the difference between sequential logical equivalence checking (SLEC) and logical equivalence checking (LEC).

LEC is the type of equivalence checking that has been around for 20 years, although like all EDA technologies gradually getting more powerful. LEC is … Read More


TSMC: 3D, 450mm, CoWoS and More

TSMC: 3D, 450mm, CoWoS and More
by Paul McLellan on 12-18-2013 at 4:29 pm

The first keynote at the Burlingame 3D conference was by Doug Yu of TSMC. Not surprisingly he was talking about 3D. In particular, TSMC has WLSI technology that they call CoWoS, which stands for chip-on-wafer-on-substrate which pretty much describes how it is built. This is the technology that Xilinx uses for its recently announced… Read More


Happy Holidays from Atrenta

Happy Holidays from Atrenta
by Paul McLellan on 12-17-2013 at 7:51 pm

It is that time of year and once again Atrenta has produced a video wishing you all the best for the holiday season. They are so spread around the world it is not just Hanukkah and Christmas but the Asian Lunar New Year (end of January) and probably some more holidays I don’t even know about. Last year there was a competition to name… Read More


Security Path Verification

Security Path Verification
by Paul McLellan on 12-16-2013 at 5:18 pm

Formal approaches and security are a perfect match since you really want to prove that there are no holes in your security, rather than just being fairly confident. At the recent Jasper User Group meeting, Victor Purri presented some case studies in security verification.

The Jasper Security Path Verification (SPV) App is used… Read More


Mentor Buys Oasys

Mentor Buys Oasys
by Paul McLellan on 12-14-2013 at 1:24 pm

Mentor is acquiring Oasys, subject to all the usual caveats about shareholder and regulatory approval. The shareholder paperwork went out earlier this week. The common stock is valueless so presumably the price is low (and Mentor historically has not paid high prices for its acquisitions).

So what is going to happen with the technology?… Read More


AMD Goes 3D

AMD Goes 3D
by Paul McLellan on 12-13-2013 at 7:16 pm

I attended the 3D packaging conference in Burlingame this week. The most interesting presentation to me was by Bryan Black of AMD. He argued very convincingly that Moore’s Law is basically over for the PC microprocessor business and the way forward is going to be 3D. AMD are clearly working on all this.

Increased density and… Read More


Known Unknowns and Unknown Unknowns

Known Unknowns and Unknown Unknowns
by Paul McLellan on 12-11-2013 at 3:18 pm

Donald Rumsfeld categorized what we knew into known unknowns and unknown unknowns. In a chip design, those unknown unknowns can bite you and leave you with a non-functional design, perhaps even intermittent failures which can be among the hardest problems to debug.

Chips are too big to do any sort of full gate-level simulation,… Read More


The Leading Edge Depends on What You Are Doing

The Leading Edge Depends on What You Are Doing
by Paul McLellan on 12-06-2013 at 11:10 pm

At Semicon Japan a few days ago, Subi Kengeri of GlobalFoundries delivered the keynote. While he covered a number of topics, using Tokyo’s recent win of the 2020 Olympics as a hook, one major theme was the increasing importance of processes other than the bleeding edge digital processes that get all the news.

What is leading… Read More


Physically Aware Synthesis

Physically Aware Synthesis
by Paul McLellan on 12-06-2013 at 2:47 pm

Yesterday Cadence had their annual front-end summit, the theme of which was physically aware design. I was especially interested in the first couple of presentations about physically aware synthesis. I joined Cadence in 1999 when they acquired Ambit Design Systems. One of the products that we had in development was called PKS… Read More


3D: Atlanta and Burlingame

3D: Atlanta and Burlingame
by Paul McLellan on 12-04-2013 at 12:44 pm

Two conferences on 3D, one just over and one coming up next week. The one that was just over was hosted by Georgia Tech, the 3rd Annual Global Interposer Technology Workshop (GIT). I wasn’t there but my ex-colleague from VLSI Technology Herb Reiter was. Herb has become very much associated with all things 3D since he led the … Read More