Semiconductor technology advances have a way of rewriting the rule book. As process geometries shrink, subtle effects graduate to mainstream problems. Performance curves can become inverted. And no matter what else occurs, low power demands are constantly reducing voltage and design margins along with it. Sometimes these… Read More
Electronic Design Automation
Perforce Software Acquires Methodics!
This has got to be one of the most interesting and disruptive EDA acquisitions I have seen in some time. Another one that comes to mind is Siemens acquiring Mentor Graphics. We have been covering EDA PLM companies since the start of SemiWiki and have worked with most of them. If I had to keep score I would say it’s about even but … Read More
CEO Interview: Anupam Bakshi of Agnisys
Although much of the EDA industry has consolidated into the “Big 3” players, there are still plenty of smaller vendors in the market. In the earlier days of EDA, it seemed that most startups existed only until they failed or did well enough to be acquired. The industry has changed; there are now a number of notable companies that have… Read More
The Official SemiWiki Virtual DAC 2020 Must See List!
This is going to be a record setting year for DAC content and attendance, absolutely!
My first DAC was in 1984 in Albuquerque New Mexico, right out of College, and I married my beautiful wife two months later. Thirty six DAC’s later I have four grown children, grandchildren, and the number one semiconductor design portal in the world.… Read More
Mentor Cuts Circuit Verification Time with Unique Recon Technology
Most of us will remember the productivity boost that hierarchical analysis provided vs. analyzing a chip flat. This “divide and conquer” approach has worked well for all kinds of designs for many years. But, as technology advances tend to do, the bar is moving again. The new challenges are rooted in the iterative nature of high complexity… Read More
Using AI to Locate a Fault. Innovation in Verification
After we detect a bug, can we use AI to locate the fault, or at least get close? Paul Cunningham (GM of Verification at Cadence), Jim Hogan and I continue our series on novel research ideas, through a paper in software verification we find equally relevant to hardware. Feel free to comment.
The Innovation
This month’s pick is… Read More
Novel DFT Approach for Automotive Vision SoCs
You may have seen a recent announcement from Mentor, a Siemens business, regarding the use of their Tessent DFT software by Ambarella for automotive applications. The announcement is a good example of how Mentor works with their customers to assure design success. On the surface the announcement comes across as a nice block and… Read More
A tour of Cliosoft’s participation at DAC 2020 with Simon Rance
As chip complexity grows, so does the need for a well-thought-out design data management strategy. This is a hot area, and Cliosoft is in the middle of it. When I was at eSilicon, we used Cliosoft technology to manage the design and layout of high-performance analog designs across widely separated design teams. The tool worked… Read More
Ansys Multiphysics Platform Tackles Power Management ICs
Ansys addresses complex Multiphysics simulation and analysis tasks, from device to chip to package and system. When I was at eSilicon we did a lot of work on 2.5D packaging and I can tell you tools from Ansys were a critical enabler to get the chip, package and system to all work correctly.
Ansys recently published an Application Brief… Read More
Hierarchical CDC analysis is possible, with the right tools
Back in my Atrenta days (before mid-2015), we were already running into a lot of very large SoC-level designs – a billion gates or more. At those sizes, full-chip verification of any kind becomes extremely challenging. Memory demand and run-times explode, and verification costs explode also since these runs require access to … Read More
Intel’s Pearl Harbor Moment