Clock gating is arguably the mostly widely-used design method to reduce power since it is broadly applicable even when more sophisticated methods like power islands are ruled out. But this style can be fraught with hazards even for careful designers. When you start with a proven-correct logic design and add clock gating, the logic… Read More
Electronic Design Automation
ADAS and Vision from Cadence
A huge theme at #54DAC this year was all things automotive and in particular the phrase ADAS (Assisted Driver Assistance Systems), so I followed up with Raja Tabet a corporate VP of emerging technology at Cadence. We met on Monday in a press room where I quickly learned that Cadence has been serving the automotive industry for the … Read More
HW and SW Co-verification for Xilinx Zynq SoC FPGAs
It constantly amazes me at how much FGPA companies like Xilinx have done to bring ARM-based CPUs into a programmable SoC along with FPGA glue logic. Xilinx offers the Zynq 7000 and Zynq UltraScale+ SoCs to systems designers as a way to quickly get their ideas into the marketplace. A side effect of all this programability and flexibility… Read More
Capture the Light with Integrated Photonics
I wrote up a quick article in the weeks before the Design Automation Conference (DAC) letting readers know that Integrated Photonics were indeed coming to DAC again this year. As a follow up, I attended the DAC presentation, ‘Capture the Light. An Integrated Photonics Design Solution from Cadence, Lumerical and PhoeniX Software’,… Read More
Overcoming the Challenges of Creating Custom SoCs for IoT
As the Internet of Things (IoT) opportunities continues to expand, companies are working hard to bring System-on-Chip (SoC) solutions to market in the hopes of garnering market share and revenue. However, it’s not as easy as it may first seem. Companies are running into a series of issues that stand between them and capturing the… Read More
ARM, Infineon, Synopsys, SK Hynix talk AMS Simulation
Every SoC that connects to an analog sensor or device requires AMS (Analog Mixed-Signal) circuit simulation for design and verification, so this year at #54DAC the organizers at Synopsys hosted another informative AMS panel session over lunch time on Monday. What makes this kind of panel so refreshing is that the invited speakers… Read More
DAC 2017: How Oracle does Reliability Simulation when designing SPARC
Last week at #54DAC there was a talk by Michael Yu from the CAD group of Oracle who discussed how they designed their latest generation of SPARC chips, with an emphasis on the reliability simulations. The three features of the latest SPARC family of chips are:
- Security in silicon
- SQL in silicon
- World’s fastest microprocessor
New Concepts in Semiconductor IP Lifecycle Management
Right before #54DAC I participated in a webinar with Methodics on “New Concepts in Semiconductor IP Lifecycle Management” with Simon Butler, CEO of Methodics, Michael Munsey, Vice President of Business Development and Strategic Accounts, and Vishal Moondhra, Vice President of Applications. Thewebinar introduced… Read More
The Real Reason Siemens Bought Mentor!
The Siemens purchase of Mentor last year for a premium $4.5B was a bit of a shock to me as I have stated before. I had an inkling a Mentor acquisition was coming but Siemens was not on my list of suitors. The reviews have been mixed and the Siemens commitment to the IC EDA market has been questioned so I spent some time on this at #54DAC.
First… Read More
Safety EDA
It takes courage and perhaps even a little insanity to start a new EDA venture these days – unless you have a decently differentiated value proposition in a hot market. One company that caught my eye, Austemper, seems to measure up to these standards (though I can’t speak to the insanity part). They offer EDA tooling specifically… Read More


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