Over a decade ago, a group of semiconductor industry experts published a landmark paper as part of the periodic updates to the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors, or ITRS for short (link). The ITRS identified a critical design productivity gap. The circuit capacity afforded by the Moore’s Law pace of technology… Read More
Accelerating the PCB Design-Analysis Optimization Loop
With the increasing complexity and diversity of the mechanical constraints and electrical requirements in electronic product development, printed circuit board designers are faced with a number of difficult challenges:
- generating accurate (S-parameter) simulation models for critical interface elements of the design
Verification Importance in Academia
“Testing can only prove the presence of bugs, not their absence,” stated the famous computer scientist Edsger Dijkstra. That notion rings true to the many college participants of the Hack@DAC competition offered during DAC 2018 in San Francisco. The goal of this competition is to develop tools and methods for identifying security… Read More
1-on-1 with Anirudh Devgan, President, Cadence
At the Design Automation Conference, no one is busier than an EDA company executive — conference panels, product launch briefings, customer meetings, and corporate dinners all place considerable demands on their time. I was fortunate enough to be able to meet with Anirudh Devgan, President of Cadence, at the recent DAC55 in San… Read More
Low Cost Power NB-IoT Solution? Fusion F1 DSP based Modem!
Supporting NB-IoT requires low cost (optimized silicon footprint) and ultra-low power solution to cope with IoT device requirement. Cadence Fusion F1 DSP IP has been integrated in modem IC by two new customers, Xinyi and Rafael, gaining traction in NB-IoT market. These design-win builds on previous momentum: software GPS solution… Read More
Cadence Selected to Support Major DARPA Program
When DARPA plans programs, they’re known for going big – really big. Which is what they are doing again with their Electronics Resurgence Initiative (ERI). Abstracting from their intro, this is a program “to ensure far-reaching improvements in electronics performance well beyond the limits of traditional scaling”. This isn’t… Read More
Cadence’s Smarter and Faster Verification in the Era of Machine Learning, AI, and Big Data Analytics Panel
I attended on Monday, June 25, DAC’s Opening Day, a Cadence-sponsored Lunch panel. Ann Steffora Mutschler (Semiconductor Engineering) was the Moderator and the Panelists were Jim Hogan (Vista Ventures), David Lacey (HP Enterprise), Shigeo Oshima (Toshiba Memory Corp), Paul Cunningham (Cadence).… Read More
Liberate Trio Embraces ML and Cloud
A chain is as strong as its weakest link. This phrase resonates well in Static Timing Analysis (STA) domain, though it is about accuracy rather than durability. As timing signoff step provides the final performance readings of a design, an STA outcome is as good as its underlying components. Aside from the parasitic extraction … Read More
Cadence in the Cloud!
The first clue was cloud vendors (Amazon, Google, IBM, etc…) at 55DAC for the first time ever with lots of cloud content including a Design on Cloud Pavilion. The second clue was the pre-briefing from Cadence last week. There has also been a lot of cloud chatter in the semiconductor ecosystem so yes, I saw this coming and EDA will get… Read More
Innovation in a Commodity Market
Logic simulation is a victim of its own success. It has been around for at least 40 years, has evolved through multiple language standards and has seen significant advances in performance and major innovations in testbench standards. All that standardization and performance improvement has been great for customers but can present… Read More