I remember during my first ten years as a software developer, I used many different computers such as IBM mainframes, Apollo and Sun workstations, and VAX computers. During that time I also bought my first home computer, a Macintosh. I didn’t of course think of this at the time, but the one thing they all had in common was that they did… Read More
Author: Randy Smith
Security Needs in On-Chip Networks
Challenges of Low Power Network-on-Chip Designs
Everyone understands that as we increasingly focus on the design of mobile devices, there is an increasing focus on low power. But, what is implied in designing for low-power? Designing for low power means we have to work with multiple power domains and multiple clock domains—making our design task more complex. We also must get… Read More
“NoC, NoC” – Are You Listening to nVidia’s Dally?
Recently Bill Dally, nVidia’s Chief Scientist & SVP of Research, and a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Stanford University, has been out speaking quite a bit including a “short keynote” at the Design Automation Conference and a keynote at ISC 2013. The DAC audience is primarily EDA tool users and… Read More
Configurable System IP from a Tool Provider
While I have previously blogged on Forte’s Cynthesizer Workbench’s Interface Generator, I want to take another look from a different perspective. Watching the tool and IP together in action through public videos provided by Forte it struck me as odd what I did not consider earlier, on what should have been obvious to me – Forte is… Read More
Analysis of HLS Results Made Easier
In a recent article I discussed how easy it was to debug SystemC source code as shown in a video published on YouTube by Forte Design Systems. I also commented on the usefulness of the well-produced Forte video series. Today, I am reviewing another video in that series on analyzing high-level synthesis (HLS) results.
Cynthesizer… Read More
Easy SystemC Debugging
Electronic system design has been slowly migrating to higher level languages such as SystemC for more than a decade now. SystemC is an open source C++ library that has emerged as a standard for high-level design and system modeling. Writing code in SystemC has several advantages which I won’t elaborate on in this article, though… Read More
Interview with Forte CTO John Sanguinetti on Cynthesizer 5
Recently, Forte Design Systems announced the release of a new core engine to their popular high-level synthesis tool offering. It is a large undertaking, so I asked John Sanguinetti, Forte’s CTO, to answer some questions about that development effort.
Q. How long has it been since the last major upgrade of the Cynthesizer… Read More
Heart of Technology Heads to DAC in Austin
With the support of the Heart of Technology, one of the big events this year at DAC will be the Kickin’ It Up in Austin celebration on June 3, at the amazing, world famous Austin City Limits Live! The event starts at 8:00 PM, runs until 1:00 AM and features three bands – 9-time Grammy winner Asleep at the Wheel; Vista Roads, an industry… Read More
Better, Faster, Cheaper: Evaluating EDA tools
With DAC approaching, it is a good time for both EDA companies and their customers to take a deeper look at the evaluation process of EDA tools, and how EDA companies position their tools. I hope this is useful for customers and vendors alike.
When it comes to positioning EDA tools in the marketplace there are really only three meaningful… Read More
CEO Interview: Jason Xing of ICScape Inc.
I recently had the opportunity to interview Jason Xing, Ph.D., CEO and President of ICScape, Inc. Below is a subset of the nearly two hour long interview.
How did you first become involved in EDA?
My EDA career started in the mid-90s when I started working on my PhD thesis at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. My thesis… Read More
Alchip Technologies Sets Another Record