GM has just announced that it will introduce a car with no steering wheel or pedals in 2019. According to their statement, they have already planned four phases of their autonomous driving system, and they will plan many more. However, before we jump into this latest car and not grab the wheel for a spin, it is reasonable to ask about… Read More
Author: Tom Simon
Moving from FPGA’s to Embedded FPGA Fabric – How it’s Done
Buying IP is just a little bit more complicated than buying a pair of shoes. A lot of IP is configurable and requires attention to various design and configuration parameters. We live in an age where commercial soft IP is used pretty often in designs, so people have developed increasing comfort in the process that is required to achieve… Read More
The lofty rise of the lowly FPGA
FPGA programmable logic has served in many capacities since it was introduced back in the early 80’s. Recently, with designers looking for innovative ways to boost system performance, FPGA’s have moved front and center. This initiative has taken on new urgency with the slowing down of process node based performance gains. The… Read More
Autonomous Vehicles Upending Automotive Design Process
The automotive industry has a history of bringing about disruptive technological advances. One only needs to look at the invention of the assembly line by Henry Ford to understand the origins of this phenomenon. Today we stand on the brink of a massive change in how cars operate and consequently how they are built. A number of automotive… Read More
Using Sequential Testing to Shorten Monte Carlo Simulations
When working on an analog design, after initial design specs have been met, it is useful to determine if the design meets specs out to 3 or 4 sigma based on process variation. This can serve as a useful step before going any further. It might not be a coincidence that foundries base their Cpk on 3-sigma. To refresh, Cpk is the ratio of the… Read More
Neural Networks Leverage New Technology and Mimic Ancient Biological Systems
Neural networks make it possible to use machine learning for a wide variety of tasks, removing the need to write new code for each new task. Neural networks allow computers to use experiential learning instead of explicit programming to make decisions. The basic concepts related to neural networks were first proposed in the 1940’s,… Read More
Snapback behavior determines ESD protection effectiveness
Terms like avalanche breakdown and impact ionization sound like they come from the world of science fiction. They do indeed come from a high stakes world, but one that plays out over and over again here and now, on a microscopic scale in semiconductor devices – namely as part of electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection. Semiconductor… Read More
High Calibre Development Keeps Mentor on Top of the Game
One might be tempted to think that technology driven gains in computer performance might be enough to keep up with the needs of design and verification tools. We know that design complexity is increasing at a rate predicted by Moore’s Law. We also know that the performance of the computers used during IC development benefit from … Read More
Safety qualification for leading edge IP elements – presentation at REUSE 2017 in Santa Clara
To ensure the reliability of automotive electronics, standards like AEC-Q100 and ISO 26262 have helped tremendously. They have created rational and explicit steps for developing and testing the electronic systems that go into our cars. These are not some abstract future requirement for fully autonomous cars, rather they are… Read More
RISC-V Business
I was at the 7[SUP]th[/SUP] RISC-V Workshop for two days this week. It was hosted by Western Digital at their headquarters in Milpitas. If you have not been following RISC-V, it is an open source Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) for processor design. The initiative started at Berkeley, and has been catching on like wildfire. … Read More










TSMC Process Simplification for Advanced Nodes