Advanced process technology offers both device and interconnect scaling for increased design density and higher performance while invoking also significant implementation complexities. Aside from the performance, power and area (PPA) aspects, designer is getting entrenched with the need of tackling more reliability … Read More
Electronic Design Automation
Functional Safety in Delhi Traffic
While at DVCon I talked to Apurva Kalia (VP R&D in the System and Verification group at Cadence). He introduced me to the ultimate benchmark test for self-driving – an autonomous 3-wheeler driving in Delhi traffic. If you’ve never visited India, the traffic there is quite an experience. Vehicles of every type pack the roads … Read More
Mentor’s Approach to Automotive Electrical Design
Most of us continue to drive cars and for me there’s always been a fascination with all things electrical that go into the actual design of a car. I’ve done typical maintenance tasks on my cars over the years like changing the battery, installing a new radio, replacing bulbs, changing a fuse, swapping out dashboard lights,… Read More
The Intention View: Disruptive Innovation for Analog Design
Intento Design builds responsive analog EDA. The ID-Xplore tool is used for analog design acceleration and technology porting at the functional level, helping companies move analog IP quickly between technology nodes and across business units. The Intention view is a simple, elegant, and powerful concept that gives the speed… Read More
RDC – A Cousin To CDC
In a post-silicon bringup, it is customary to bring the design into a known state prior to applying further testing sequences. This is achieved through a Power-on-Reset (POR) or similar reset strategy which translates to initializing all the storage elements to a known state.
During design implementation, varying degrees of… Read More
Artificial Intelligence calls for Smart Interconnect
Artificial Intelligence based systems are driving a metamorphosis in computing, and consequently precipitating a large shift in SOC design. AI training is often done in the cloud and has requirements for handling huge amounts of data with forward and backward data connections. Inference usually occurs at the edge and must be… Read More
Tensilica 5th Generation DSP: Mix of Vision and AI
Cadence has launched the new Tensilica Vision Q6 DSP IP, delivering 1.5x more performance than the former Vision P6 DSP IP and 1.25X better power efficiency. According with Cadence, the mobile industry is moving from traditional feature-based embedded vision to AI-based algorithm, even if all use cases still have mix of vision… Read More
Functional Safety – the Analytics
ISO 26262 is serious stuff, the governing process behind automotive safety. But, as I have observed before, it doesn’t make for light reading. The standard is all about process and V-diagrams, mountains of documentation and accredited experts. I wouldn’t trade a word of it (or my safety) for a more satisfying read, but all that … Read More
Sometimes a Solver is a Suitable Solution
Traditional, rule based, RC extractors rely on a substantial base of assumptions, which are increasingly proving unreliable. Having accurate RC extraction results for parasitic R’s and C’s is extremely important for ensuring proper circuit operation and for optimizing performance and power. Advanced process nodes are making… Read More
EDA CEO Outlook 2018 Partly Cloudy
The funniest line of the EDA CEO Outlook event was that we should rename our Amazon Echos Wally. Yes Wally is that smart and he remembers pretty much everything. I wish I could rename my Echo Wally because my daughter in-law is named Alexa so we have to turn it off when she is over. The discussion took an interesting turn with EDA in the … Read More


Weebit Nano Reports on 2025 Targets