Barbecue at DAC

Barbecue at DAC
by Paul McLellan on 05-28-2013 at 1:55 pm

I already wrote about Franklin Barbecue, by some rankings the best in the whole country. If you want to go there you must be there early. They start serving at 11am and run out of food around 1pm. Closed on Monday.

But there are other barbecue and similar places near the convention center. Since I’m not an Austin native (we’ll… Read More


DAC50 App for iPhone Now Available

DAC50 App for iPhone Now Available
by Paul McLellan on 05-24-2013 at 8:24 pm

This year’s version of Bill Deegan’s DAC App for iPhone is now available for download from the iTunes App Store. The App has the entire calendar included, and makes it easy to add any interesting looking event to your calendar. The whole exhibit hall can be searched and there is a zoomable map of the exhibit hall.

I have… Read More


The Internet of Things

The Internet of Things
by Paul McLellan on 05-24-2013 at 1:02 am

There is a lot of talk about the Internet of Things (IoT) about how everything is going to be connected to the internet. For some reason the archetypal example is a refrigerator that knows what you are nearly out of and puts it on your shopping list. Or orders it from the store. Or something. This seems like pretty high on the list of things… Read More


PinPoint in Practice

PinPoint in Practice
by Paul McLellan on 05-23-2013 at 10:40 pm

I talked with a mystery person earlier this week. I would love to tell you his (or her) name and the company he (or she) works for but they are the sort of company that doesn’t casually endorse any suppliers so it all has to remain anonymous. But they have been a customer of Pinpoint, originally from Tuscany Design Automation until… Read More


Do You Need to Worry About Soft Errors?

Do You Need to Worry About Soft Errors?
by Paul McLellan on 05-22-2013 at 6:51 pm

As we get down to smaller and smaller process nodes, the problem of soft errors becomes increasingly important. These soft errors are caused by neutrons from cosmic rays, alpha particles from materials used in manufacture and other sources. For chips that go into systems with high reliability this is not something that can be ignored.… Read More


Samsung’s Life of Pi @ Apache @ DAC

Samsung’s Life of Pi @ Apache @ DAC
by Paul McLellan on 05-20-2013 at 4:51 pm

Last week I talked to Eileen You of Samsung-SSI to get a preview on what they will be talking about at Apache’s customer theater at DAC. Their presentation is titledThe Life of PI: SoC Power Integrity from Early Estimation to Design Sign-off. The ‘PI’ stands for Power Integrity.

Samsung-SSI’s operations… Read More


Tempus: Cadence Takes On PrimeTime

Tempus: Cadence Takes On PrimeTime
by Paul McLellan on 05-20-2013 at 7:00 am

Today Cadence announced Tempus, their new timing signoff solution. This has been in development for at least a couple of years and has been built from the ground up to be massively parallelized. Not just that different corners can be run in parallel (which is basically straightforward) but that large designs can be partitioned … Read More


Oasys Announces Floorplan Compiler

Oasys Announces Floorplan Compiler
by Paul McLellan on 05-19-2013 at 5:58 pm

Today Oasys announced the availability of Floorplan Compiler in the Oasys RealTime suite of physical RTL exploration and synthesis tools. This is actually a repackaging of a capability that has always been in RealTime Designer, and in fact has been an important aspect of how well RealTime Designer has performed in benchmarks … Read More


Dassault DAC Assault

Dassault DAC Assault
by Paul McLellan on 05-19-2013 at 3:25 pm

Dassault Systèmes is not a company entirely new to DAC, but with the acquisition of Matrix One (which had already acquired DesignSync) a few years ago and Tuscany Design Automation’s PinPoint last year they now have a richer portfolio to support various aspects of electronic design. By the way, Dassault is a French company… Read More