For modern SoC teams, “shift left” no longer means finding a few more RTL bugs before tape-out. It means moving meaningful system validation earlier—far enough left that firmware, operating systems, drivers, applications, and external interfaces can be exercised before first silicon arrives. This change is essential as software… Read More
Electronic Design Automation
Synopsys Demonstrates Leadership in AI-Powered Engineering at 2026 DAC Chips to Systems Conference
Purple was in fashion at the 2026 Design Automation Conference, where Synopsys reinforced its position at the forefront of AI-powered engineering. Under the conference’s “Chips to Systems” theme, the company showcased intelligent, end-to-end technologies designed to help the semiconductor industry manage unprecedented… Read More
DAC 2026: The Trouble with John Cooley’s Troublemaker Panel
For quite a few years, John Cooley has hosted the Troublemaker Panel at DAC. The event consists of a panel of senior executives from the EDA industry. John Cooley asks his readers for “edgy” questions to ask the panelists and on event day, he does just that. Those with complete responses that are backed with real data from real customers… Read More
Industry’s First Certified Automotive Grade PUF for Software Defined Vehicles
Software defined vehicles (SDVs) are transforming the automotive industry. Today’s vehicles are connected computing platforms that rely on advanced processors, artificial intelligence (AI), over the air (OTA) software updates, cloud services, and vehicle to everything (V2X) communications. Every electronic … Read More
Formal Acceleration on FPGA. Innovation in Verification
Extending hardware acceleration to formal verification is a powerful idea to extend hardware acceleration to a verification domain that has not got much attention for acceleration. Paul Cunningham (GM, Verification at Cadence), Raúl Camposano (Silicon Catalyst, entrepreneur, former Synopsys CTO and lecturer at Stanford,… Read More
ASIC-to-FPGA Turnkey Prototyping Bundle: A Practical Path to Earlier Hardware Validation
For ASIC design teams, the gap between RTL simulation and first silicon remains one of the most consequential stages of the development cycle. Simulation provides controllability and visibility, but it cannot always reproduce the software workloads, interface behavior, clock interactions, and sustained system activity… Read More
How early symmetry validation eliminates costly late-stage respins
By Mauli Shah, Product Engineer, Siemens
Analog and mixed-signal design teams face a persistent challenge that directly impacts tape-out schedules and project predictability: symmetry violations discovered at signoff trigger expensive respins, delay schedules and create unpredictable iteration cycles. Despite symmetry… Read More
Rethinking Formal Verification in the AI Era
By Kanav Arora, ML Researcher at ChipAgents
Most hardware teams already understand why formal verification matters. It can expose corner cases that simulation may never reach and establish critical behaviors across the modeled state space.
The unresolved question is not whether formal works. It is why formal remains a specialist… Read More
CEO Interview with Ann Wu and Akash Levy of Silimate
Ann Wu is Co-founder & CEO of Silimate. Before Silimate, Ann designed several generations of custom silicon at Apple, helped manage inference ASIC programs at Meta, and led product strategy and execution at Celestial AI. Ann has a M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering… Read More
From Process Learning to Production Control: Characterization for the Era of Heterogeneous Systems
Every generation of semiconductor innovation has relied on one fundamental principle: before a technology can be manufactured at scale, it must first be understood. That understanding comes through characterization.
For decades, characterization enabled process learning. It helped engineers understand transistor behavior,… Read More


ASML High-NA EUV is Not Ready for High-Volume Production