At the recent DAC conference in Austin I attended a panel discussion over lunch where engineers from four companies talked about how they approached mixed-signal design and verification challenges for automotive and IoT systems. It seems like 2017 was the year of automotive at DAC, while in 2016 it was all about IoT. Both segments… Read More
Electronic Design Automation
Whitepaper : The True Costs of Process Node Migration
Mentor, A Siemens Business, just released a new white paper entitled, “The True Costs of Process Node Migration” written by John Ferguson. This is a good quick read that highlights some of the key areas that are often over looked when contemplating a shift of process nodes for your next design.
When considering a shift to a more advanced… Read More
Machine Learning Optimizes FPGA Timing
Machine learning (ML) is the hot new technology of our time so EDA development teams are eagerly searching for new ways to optimize various facets of design using ML to distill wisdom from the mountains of data generated in previous designs. Pre-ML, we had little interest in historical data and would mostly look only at localized… Read More
ClioSoft’s designHUB Debut Well Received
It was only back in May of this year that ClioSoft first introduced designHUB, a revolutionary new product that is meant to enable better use of intellectual property (IP) within a company. I wrote a SemiWiki article at the time of the announcement and mentioned it again in a lead-up article to the 54[SUP]th[/SUP] Design Automation… Read More
Cloud-Based Emulation
At the risk of attracting contempt from terminology purists, I think most of us would agree that emulation is a great way to prototype a hardware design before you commit to building, especially when you need to test system software together with that prototype. But setting up your own emulation resource isn’t for everyone. The … Read More
ARM and Cadence IP Simplify IoT System Design and Verification
As the Internet-of-Things (IoT) markets mature, we are seeing the complexity of IoT systems evolve from simple routing functions that connect IoT edge devices to the cloud into more complex system of systems that manage the interaction between multiple sensor-hubs. IoT sensor-hubs and gateways not only take care of basic care… Read More
Synopsys Opens up on Emulation
Synopsys hosted a lunch panel on Tuesday of DAC this year, in which verification leaders from Intel, Qualcomm, Wave Computing, NXP and AMD talked about how they are using Synopsys verification technologies. Panelists covered multiple domains but the big takeaway for me was their full-throated endorsement of the ZeBu emulation… Read More
Tensilica HiFi 3z DSP Core: Leading Energy Efficiency
Tensilica HiFi DSP family, dedicated to voice and audio processing, is shipping over 1 billion units worldwide annually, thanks to the 75+ licensees. The new HiFi 3z architecture offers more than 1.3X better voice and audio processing performance than its predecessor, the HiFi 3 DSP, which leads the industry in the number of audio… Read More
A Functional Safety Primer for FPGA – and the Rest of Us
Once in a while I come across a vendor-developed webinar which is so generally useful it deserves to be shared beyond the confines of sponsored sites. I don’t consider this spamming – if you choose you can ignore the vendor-specific part of the webinar and still derive significant value from the rest. In this instance, the topic is… Read More
Emulation makes the What to See List
The analysts at Gary Smith EDA produce an annual What To See List for DAC and I quickly noticed that all three major EDA vendors were included on the list for the specific category of emulation. The big problem that emulation addresses is the ability to run in hardware an early version of your SoC so that software developers can get access… Read More


CEO Interview with Aftkhar Aslam of yieldWerx