Earlier physical optimization impacts a design QoR gain and can disclose potential hurdles in dealing with unknown design variants such as new IP inclusion or new process node issues. Along the RTL-to-GDS2 implementation continuum, a left-shift move requires a robust modeling and proper context captures in order to produce… Read More
Electronic Design Automation
Accelerated Verification with Synopsys
At DAC 2018, Synopsys held a lunch panel discussing verification challenges faced by the industry leaders, their adopted approaches and the overall verification technology trends. This panel of industry experts from Intel, AMD, Samsung, STM and Qualcomm also shared their viewpoints on what drives the SoC complexity and how… Read More
Cadence’s Smarter and Faster Verification in the Era of Machine Learning, AI, and Big Data Analytics Panel
I attended on Monday, June 25, DAC’s Opening Day, a Cadence-sponsored Lunch panel. Ann Steffora Mutschler (Semiconductor Engineering) was the Moderator and the Panelists were Jim Hogan (Vista Ventures), David Lacey (HP Enterprise), Shigeo Oshima (Toshiba Memory Corp), Paul Cunningham (Cadence).… Read More
A New Kind of Analog EDA Company
My IC design career started out with circuit design of DRAMS, so I got to quickly learn all about transistor-level design at the number one IDM in the world, Intel at the time. In the early days, circa 1978 we circuit designers actually had few EDA tools, mostly a SPICE circuit simulator followed by manual extraction, manual netlisting,… Read More
Mentor Calibre Panel
Getting your tape-out done on time is hard, but can it be made easier? That was the main topic of Mentor’s Calibre Panel held at DAC 2018, attended by a few key players in IC design ecosystem: Bob Stear, VP of Marketing at Samsung represented the foundry side; from the IP side, Prasad Subramaniam, VP of eSilicon for R&D and Technology;… Read More
55DAC Trip Report IP Quality
This year I signed books in the Fractal booth (compliments of Fractal) and let me tell you it was quite an experience. IP quality is a very touchy subject and the source of many more tape-out delays than I had imagined. As it turns out, commercial IP is the biggest offender which makes no sense to me whatsoever. Even more shocking, one… Read More
Liberate Trio Embraces ML and Cloud
A chain is as strong as its weakest link. This phrase resonates well in Static Timing Analysis (STA) domain, though it is about accuracy rather than durability. As timing signoff step provides the final performance readings of a design, an STA outcome is as good as its underlying components. Aside from the parasitic extraction … Read More
CEO Interview: Cristian Amitroaie of AMIQ EDA
AMIQ EDA has caught my attention over the last few months. My first impression was that this was just another small IDE company trying to compete with established and bundled IDEs from the big 3, a seemingly insurmountable barrier. This view was challenged by an impressive list of testimonials, not just from the little guys but also… Read More
DAC 2018 Potpourri
The venue
Despite of being held at the new three-story Moscone West building, this year 55th DAC in San Francisco bore many similarities as compared with last year’s. Similar booth decors and floorplan positioning of the big two, Synopsys and Cadence, which were across of each other and right next to the first floor entrance –although… Read More
Design for Power: An Insider View
The second keynote at Mentor’s U2U this year was given by Hooman Moshar, VP of Engineering at Broadcom, on the always (these days) important topic of design for power. This is one of my favorite areas. I have, I think, a decent theoretical background in the topic, but I definitely need a periodic refresh on the ground reality from the… Read More


Quantum Computing Technologies and Challenges