The upcoming Design Automation Conference in San Francisco includes a very interesting session –“Has the Time for Embedded FPGA Come at Last?” Periodically, I’ve been having coffee with the team at Flex Logix, to get their perspective on this very question – specifically, to learn about the key features that customers are seeking… Read More
Author: Tom Dillinger
Top 10 Highlights of the TSMC 2018 Technology Symposium
Here are the Top 10 highlights from the recent TSMC 2018 Technology Symposium, held in Santa Clara CA. A couple of years ago, TSMC acknowledged the unique requirements of 4 different market segments, which has since guided their process development strategy — Mobile, High-Performance Computing (HPC), Automotive, and… Read More
Hard IP for an embedded FPGA
As Moore’s Law enables increased integration, the diversity of functionality in SoC designs has grown. Design teams are seeking to utilize outside technical expertise in key functional areas, and to accelerate their productivity by re-using existing designs that others have developed. The Intellectual Property (IP) industry… Read More
Configurability for Embedded FPGA Hard IP
IP providers need to evaluate several complex engineering problems when addressing customer requirements – perhaps the most intricate challenge is the degree of IP configurabilityavailable to satisfy unique customer applications. … Read More
An OSAT Reference Flow for Complex System-in-Package Design
With each new silicon process node, the complexity of SoC design rules and physical verification requirements increases significantly. The foundry and an EDA vendor collaborate to provide a “reference flow” – a set of EDA tools and process design kit (PDK) data that have been qualified for the new node. SoC design methodology … Read More
Analog-to-Digital Converter IP for IoT Designs
The projected revenue growth rate for IoT electronics remains strong, across a wide range of applications – e.g., visual object identification, voice recognition, machine automation, health and fitness applications, environmental and energy controls. A key component of these designs is the analog-to-digital conversion… Read More
The hierarchical architecture of an embedded FPGA
The most powerful approach to managing the complexity of current SoC hardware is the identification of hierarchical instances with which to assemble the design. The development of the hierarchical design representation requires judicious assessment of the component definitions. The goals for clock distribution, power … Read More
IPC-2581: The Standard for PCB Data Exchange
The motivations to establish an industry standard data format are varied:
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- solidify a “de facto” standard, transitioning its evolution and support from a single company to an industry consortium;
- aggregate disparate sources of design and manufacturing data into a single representation, with documented semantics;
Adapting an embedded FPGA for Aerospace Applications
The IC industry is commonly divided into different market segments – consumer, mobile, industrial, commercial, medical, automotive, and aerospace. A key differentiation among these segments is the characterization and reliability qualification strategy for the fabrication process and design circuitry. For each segment,… Read More
Scoreboard and Issues Management Tools for PCB Projects
The complexity of an SoC design necessitates that the project managers have accurate visibility into the overall design status, spanning the entire range of tasks – from functional simulation error triage, to physical layout verification errors, to electrical analysis results. Flow scripts used by SoC teams parse the log file… Read More
Alphawave Semi is in Play!