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
Electronic Design Automation
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
Low Power and RISC-V Talks at DAC2020, Hosted by Mentor
I’m going to get to low power and RISC-V, but first I’m trying out virtual DAC this year. Seems to be working smoothly, aside from some glitches in registration. But maybe that’s just me – I switched email addresses in the middle of the process. Some sessions are live, many pre-recorded, not quite the same interactive experience… Read More
A SoC Design Flow With IP-XACT
Taping out a SoC is never easy. The physical dimensions of the chip often belie the work which has been done to get to the tapeout stage. And it is still not a done deal as the hardware and software development teams await the arrival of the test chip from the foundry to complete the post silicon bring-up and validation. The pressure on… Read More
Synopsys Webinar: A Comprehensive Overview of High-Speed Data Center Communications
High-speed communication is a critical component for many applications, most notably in the data center. The serializer/deserializer physical interface, or SerDes PHY is the backbone of many different forms of high-speed communication for this application. Use cases include on chip, between chips, between boards and racks… Read More
How yieldHUB Helps Bring a New Product to Market
Collecting and analyzing semiconductor test data is a subject that holds a special place for me. Developing a factory data collection and analysis system was my first job out of school. The company was RCA, and the factories were in Findlay, Ohio (analog/mixed signal) and West Palm Beach, Florida (digital). There was a pilot… Read More


Silicon Insurance: Why eFPGA is Cheaper Than a Respin — and Why It Matters in the Intel 18A Era