To replace a human driver, autonomous car will have to “see” and do it in a better way than human being. The available solution, based on camera, radar, lidar, is not perfect and need to be improved. Radar is great for “seeing” in bad weather but has insufficient resolution to distinguish distant objects. Lidar produces high-resolution… Read More
Electronic Design Automation
Synopsys GLOBALFOUNDRIES and Automotive IP
IP vendors have always had the inside track on the status of new process nodes and what customers are planning for their next designs. This is even more apparent now that systems companies are successfully doing their own chips by leveraging the massive amounts of commercial IP available today. Proving once again that IP really … Read More
How Well Did Methodics do in 2018?
In January I read from the ESDA Allianceabout EDA and Semiconductor IP revenues increasing 6.7% for Q3 2018, reaching $2,435.6 million, which is decent growth for our maturing industry. In stark contrast there’s a company called Methodicsthat specializes in Intellectual Property Lifecycle Management (IPLM) and traceability… Read More
Mentor Automating Design Compliance with Power-Aware Simulation HyperLynx and Xpedition Flow
High-speed design requires addressing signal integrity (SI) and power integrity (PI) challenges. Power integrity has a frequency component. The Power Distribution Network (PDN) in designs has 2 different purposes: providing power to the chip, and acting as a power plane reference for transmission-line like propagating … Read More
Delivering Innovation for Regulated Markets
When delivering devices to markets that require heavily audited compliance it is necessary to document and demonstrate development processes that follow the various standard(s) such as IEC65108, IATF16949, ISO26262.
For complex multi-disciplinary designs this can be difficult as they are often developed by multiple teams… Read More
Verifying Software Defined Networking
I’ve designed hardware and written software for decades now, so it comes as no surprise to see industry trends like Software Defined Radio (SDR) and Software Defined Networking (SDN) growing in importance. Instead of designing a switch with fixed logic you can use an SDN approach to allow for greatest flexibility, even … Read More
Accelerating Post-Silicon Debug and Test
The recent growing complexity in SoC designs attributed to the increased use of embedded IP’s for more design functionalities, has imposed a pressing challenge to the post-silicon bring-up process and impacting the overall product time-to-market.
According to data from Semico Research, more than 60% of design starts contain… Read More
CEO Interview: Adnan Hamid of Breker Systems
Breker Verification Systems solves challenges across the functional verification process for large, complex semiconductors. This includes streamlining UVM-based testbenches for IP verification, synchronizing software and hardware tests for large system-on-chips (SoCs), and simplifying test sets for hardware emulation… Read More
Silvaco on Simulation of Reliability and NBTI Aging in MOS Microelectronics
Silvaco was founded the same year I entered the EDA industry (1984) fresh from University. I first met them at the Design Automation Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and have been an active observer of their growth ever since. In fact, Silvaco is now the largest privately held EDA company and is growing at a rapid pace. In 2014… Read More
Physical Design for Secure Split Manufacturing of ICs
Semiconductors are not only critical to modern life, semiconductors are critical to National Security. Now that leading edge semiconductor foundries have left the United States one of the more pressing challenges is secure semiconductor manufacturing. This applies to all countries of course so let’s take a look at the International… Read More


Weebit Nano Reports on 2025 Targets