Like many of us, I’m a fan of open-source solutions. They provide common platforms for common product evolution, avoiding a lot of unnecessary wheel re-invention, over and over again. Linux, TensorFlow, Apache projects, etc., etc. More recently the theme moved into hardware with OpenCores and now the RISC-V ISA. All good stuff.… Read More
Electronic Design Automation
HCL Webinar Series – HCL VersionVault Delivers Version Control and More
HCL is an interesting organization. You may know them as an Indian company that provides software and hardware services. At about $10B US and over 110,000 employees working around the world, they are indeed a force in the industry. They’ve also created a software company called HCL Software that develops tools and technologies… Read More
Structural CDC Analysis Signoff? Think Again.
Talking not so long ago to a friend from my Atrenta days, I learned that the great majority of design teams still run purely structural CDC analysis. You should sure asynchronous clock domains are suitably represented in the SDC, find all places where data crosses between those domains that require a synchronizer, gray-coded FIFO… Read More
Cadence on Automotive Safety: Without Security, There is no Safety
One of the Designer Track at this year’s DAC focused on the popular topic of automotive electronics. The title was particularly on-point, The Modern Automobile: A Safety and Security “Hot Zone”. The session was chaired by Debdeep Mukhopadhyay, a Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur.
This special, invited… Read More
Webinar Replay – Designing and Verifying HBM ESD Protection Networks
Every chip needs ESD protection, especially RF, analog and nm designs. Because each type of design has specific needs relating to IOs, pad rings, operating voltage, process, etc. it is important that the ESD protection network is carefully tailored to the design. Also because of interactions between the design and its ESD protection… Read More
Cooley’s 11 Quickie Questions About Virtual DAC’20 Last Week!
Just a little funny history, after I started my Silicon Valley Blog in 2009 several EDA CEOs bullied me into creating my own site to compete with John Cooley’s DeepChip.com. Competition is good, right? One good friend and CEO even suggested I call it DeepNenni.com. Thankfully we came up with something a little less awkward,
Synopsys Presents SAT-Sweeping Enhancements for Logic Synthesis
There was a “research reviewed” panel on Thursday at DAC entitled Shortening the Wires Between High-Level Synthesis and Logic Synthesis. Chaired by Alric Althoff of Tortuga Logic, the panel explored methods to deal with wire delays in high-level synthesis and logic synthesis. The four speakers and their focus were:
- Licheng
DAC Panel – Artificial Intelligence Comes to CAD: Where’s the Data?
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) are becoming more and more commonplace in our world. We have Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant that understand our voice commands. Vision systems that recognize objects are used for facial recognition, autonomous driving, medical, geographical and many other applications.… Read More
DAC Panel: Cadence Weighs in on AI for EDA, What Applications, Where’s the Data?
DAC was full of great panels, research papers and chip design stories this year, the same as other years. Being a virtual show, there were some differences of course. I’ve heard attendance was way up, allowing a lot more folks to experience the technical program. This is likely to be true for a virtual event. I’m sure we’ll see more… Read More
#57DAC – Panel Discussion of High Level Synthesis
Presenters took a trip down memory lane at DAC this year by having a panel discussion on HLS (High Level Synthesis) spanning from 1974 to 2020, and that time period aligns with when I first graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1978, starting chip design at Intel, then later transitioning into EDA companies by 1986. Marilyn… Read More


AI Bubble?