The first consumer products with 20nm processing are arriving in 2014 like the 2 billion transistor A8 chip in the iPhone 6, however at the 14nm node there are new designs underway to continue the trend of Moore’s Law. To get a better feel for the challenges of designing with 14nm FinFET technology I watched a 23 minute video … Read More
SmartScan Addresses Test Challenges of SoCs
With advancement of semiconductor technologies, ever increasing sizes of SoCs bank on higher densities of design rather than giving any leeway towards increasing chip area and package sizes; a phenomenon often overlooked. The result is – larger designs with lesser number of pins bonded out of ever shrinking package sizes;… Read More
Cadence white paper helps you selecting what come after DDR4
The DRAM market is shaking… In 2014, analysts predict that LPDDR4 will surpass DDR4 for the first time. When releasing DDR4 standard, JEDEC has clearly stated that the industry should not expect any DDR5. Does this means that DRAM technology new development is ending with DDR4? According with Mike Howard, principal analyst at … Read More
Cadence and Reverse Debugging
I wrote back in March about Undo Software. They have a reverse debugging solution called UndoDB (the DB is for debug, not database). I have a soft spot for reverse debugging ever since seeing one of the engineers at Virtutech type reverse single step and seeing the code back up a single instruction and realizing that literally months… Read More
Cadence Completes Power Signoff Solution with Voltus-Fi
You probably remember Cadence introduced Voltus towards the end of last year at their signoff summit. This was aimed at digital designers. Prior to that they had announced Tempus, their static timing analysis tool. More recently they announced Quantus QRC extraction. All of these tools that end in -us have been re-architected… Read More
A Deeper Insight into Quantus QRC Extraction Solution
Last month Cadenceannounced its fastest parasitic extraction tool (minimum 5 times better performance compared to other available tools) which can handle growing design sizes with interconnect explosion, number of parasitics and complexities at advanced process nodes including FinFETs, without impacting accuracy of … Read More
Cadence Results: Good but Palladium under Price Pressure
Cadence announced their 2Q results this afternoon. I listened to the conference call.
You can read all the details of the results in the press release but the big picture is:
- Revenue $379K, net income $23M GAAP or $64M non-GAAP (8, 21c per share, beat estimates by 1c). Equivalent quarter last year was $362M so less than 5% increase)
Palladium’s Little Brother Protium
Today, Cadence announced Protium, a new FPGA prototyping platform for software development. During development of an SoC, the most appropriate methodology changes. In the early days, developing RTL, the primary tool is simulation. Then, as the blocks get bigger or as the whole chip starts to come together, typically simulation… Read More
Cadence Announces Quantus Next Generation Extraction
Today Cadence announced their next generation extraction solution called Quantus QRC. Actually they are technically announcing it tomorrow, since it is being announced at CDNLive in Korea where it is already Tuesday morning.
As with the other recently announced tools that end in -us, Tempus (timing signoff) and Voltus (power… Read More
So Easy To Learn VIP Integration into UVM Environment
It goes without saying that VIPs really play a Very Important Part in SoC verification today. It has created a significant semiconductor market segment in the fabless world of SoC and IP design & verification. In order to meet the aggressive time-to-market for IPs and SoCs, it’s imperative that readymade VIPs which are proven… Read More