Atrenta at DAC: Fast Lint, IP Kit and More

Atrenta at DAC: Fast Lint, IP Kit and More
by Paul McLellan on 05-09-2012 at 7:03 pm

Atrenta will have a new look this year at DAC. I’m not quite sure what that means but we’ll all just have to go along and find out.

They have three users talking about their use of Atrenta’s tools. All 3 of these presentations are in the user-track poster session on Tuesday June 5th 12.30-1.30pm in room 105 (which … Read More


Customers Talk About Reliability, Low-Power and 3D

Customers Talk About Reliability, Low-Power and 3D
by Paul McLellan on 05-09-2012 at 1:13 pm

At DAC in San Francisco this year, Apache once again have a mixture of presentations by customers on their use of Apache tools and presentations by Apache themselves on their products. Most of the customer presentations are given just once, but the product presentations are given multiple times over the three days.

I think one of… Read More


San Francisco Bars

San Francisco Bars
by Paul McLellan on 05-08-2012 at 6:00 pm

If you are visiting DAC and want a drink in the evening then you are in an interesting city and you don’t have to go to a bar just like the ones in the city where you live. Here are a few unique places but take note, most of these places don’t serve any food, they are all about the drinks:

Bourbon and Branch. It is an old speakeasy. You … Read More


Formal Verification, there’s an App for that

Formal Verification, there’s an App for that
by Paul McLellan on 05-06-2012 at 6:00 pm

The success of Apple’s AppStore has made people aware that software doesn’t have to be delivered in a big monolithic lump. Indeed, going back a bit earlier, Apple’s iTunes store made people aware that you didn’t have to buy a whole album if you only wanted a track or two.

EDA applications in today’s… Read More


Where to eat lunch or get a beer at DAC

Where to eat lunch or get a beer at DAC
by Paul McLellan on 05-04-2012 at 11:17 pm

You are going to DAC. And you don’t want to eat a Moscone Center rubber chicken Caesar salad for lunch. But you lack local knowledge. So here are some places within a 10 minute walk. These are just places I like. Nobody is paying me to recommend them.

Places to eat
The food court in the San Francisco Center on Market Street between… Read More


The Biggest EDA Company You’ve Never Heard Of

The Biggest EDA Company You’ve Never Heard Of
by Paul McLellan on 05-02-2012 at 8:30 pm

There’s this EDA company. They have over 100 tapeouts. They have a $28M in funding. They have 250 people. And you’ve never heard of them. Or at least I hadn’t.

They are ICScape. They started in 2005 with an investment from Acorn Campus Ventures and delivered their first product, ClockExplorer, in 2007 and their… Read More


Use a SpyGlass to Look for Faults

Use a SpyGlass to Look for Faults
by Paul McLellan on 05-02-2012 at 5:24 pm

There is a famous quote (probably attributed to Mark Twain who gets them all by default) “When looking for faults use a mirror not a spyglass.” Of course if you have RTL of your IP or your design then using a SpyGlass is clearly the better way to go. But it is getting even better since there is a new enhanced release, SpyGlass… Read More


ARM Models: Carbon Inside

ARM Models: Carbon Inside
by Paul McLellan on 05-01-2012 at 10:00 pm

ARM used to build their own models. By hand. They had an instruction-set simulator (ISS) called ARMulator that was largely intended for software development, and cycle-accurate models that were intended to run within digital simulators for development of the hardware of ARM-based systems.

There were two problems with this … Read More


RedHawk: On to the Future

RedHawk: On to the Future
by Paul McLellan on 05-01-2012 at 6:00 am

For many, maybe most, big designs, Apache’s RedHawk is the signoff tool for analyzing issues around power: electromigration, power supply droop, noise, transients and so on. But the latest designs have some issues: they are enormous (so you can’t just analyze them naively any more than you can run a Spice simulation… Read More


GSA 3DIC and Cadence

GSA 3DIC and Cadence
by Paul McLellan on 04-29-2012 at 10:00 pm

At the GSA 3D IC working group meeting, Cadence presented their perspective on 3D ICs. Their view will turn out to be important since the new chair of the 3D IC working group is going to be Ken Potts of Cadence. Once GSA decided the position could not be funded then an independent consultant like Herb Reiter had to bow out and the position… Read More