Most of us are familiar with the metastability problems that can be caused by clock domain crossings (CDC). Early static analysis techniques can flag these kinds of issues to ensure there are no surprises later. I spent quite a bit of time at Atrenta, the SpyGlass company, so I am very familiar with these challenges. Due to the demands… Read More
Electronic Design Automation
A Recipe for Performance Optimization in Arm-Based Systems
Around the mid-2000’s the performance component of Moore’s Law started to tail off. That slack was nicely picked up by architecture improvements which continue to march forward but add a new layer of complexity in performance optimization and verification. Nick Heaton (Distinguished Engineer and Verification Architect at… Read More
Synopsys Accelerates Innovation on TSMC Advanced Processes
We all know that making advanced semiconductors is a team sport. TSMC can innovate the best processes, but without the right design flows, communication schemes and verified IP it becomes difficult to access those processes. Synopsys recently announced some details on this topic. It covers a lot of ground. The graphic at the top… Read More
SoC Power Islands Verification with Hardware-assisted Verification
The ever-growing demand for longer battery life in mobile devices and energy savings in general have pushed power optimization to the top of designers’ concerns. While various techniques like multi-VT transistors and clock gating offer power savings at gate-level design, the real impact occurs at system level, where hardware… Read More
Anirudh Fireside Chats with Jensen and Cristiano
At CadenceLIVE 2024 Anirudh Devgan (President and CEO of Cadence) hosted two fireside chats, one with Jensen Huang (President and CEO of NVIDIA) and one with Cristiano Amon (President and CEO of Qualcomm). As you would expect both discussions were engaging and enlightening. What follows are my takeaways from those chats.
Anirudh
… Read MoreARC-V portfolio plus mature software IP targets three tiers
Synopsys is bridging its long-running ARC® processor IP strategy into a RISC-V architecture – Bernard Murphy introduced the news here on SemiWiki last November. We’re getting new insight from Synopsys on its ARC-V™ portfolio and how they see RISC-V IP plus their mature software development toolchain IP fitting customer needs… Read More
Siemens EDA Makes 3D IC Design More Accessible with Early Package Assembly Verification
2.5D and 3D ICs present special challenges since these designs contain multiple chiplets of different materials integrated in all three dimensions. This complexity demands full assembly verification of the entire stack, considering all the subtle electrical and physical interactions of the complete system. Identifying… Read More
Don’t Settle for Less Than Optimal – Get the Perfect Inductor Every Time
The meaning of the word “Veloce” is “blazing fast”. It is the inspiration behind the name of the Ansys VeloceRF electromagnetic (EM) passive device synthesis platform that has been a favorite among RF and high-speed integrated circuit (IC) designers for more than 15 years. VeloceRF is a name that designers automatically connect… Read More
Synopsys is Paving the Way for Success with 112G SerDes and Beyond
Data communication speeds continue to grow. New encoding schemes, such as PAM-4 are helping achieve faster throughput. Compared to the traditional NRZ scheme, PAM4 can send twice the signal by using four levels vs. the two used in NRZ. The diagram at the top of this post shows the how data density is increased. With progress comes… Read More
Rigid-flex PCB Design Challenges
From Zion Research I learned that the flexible electronics market was about $13.2B in 2021 and growing at a CAGR of 21%, so that was impressive. There are several factors that make rigid-flex circuit so attractive, like: space efficiency, reduced weight, enhanced reliability, improved signal integrity, streamlined assembly,… Read More
CHIPS Act dies because employees are fired – NIST CHIPS people are probationary