I’ve been attending DAC since the late 1980’s and can tell you that it’s an annual highlight for me and anyone else interested in the EDA, IP and semiconductor industries. Where else can you see most of the big and little vendors of EDA software, semiconductor IP and foundries in one place? I recently blogged about… Read More
Electronic Design Automation
How Far Has Design Automation Brought Us?
It’s always a struggle explaining electronic design automation (EDA) to people who ask me what field I am in. I have come up with simple and minimal descriptions – such as “software used for designing semiconductors.” This, of course, does little to provide any useful understanding to people who are not familiar with the field.… Read More
Machine Learning and EDA!
Semiconductor design is littered with complex, data-driven challenges where the cost of error is high. Solido’s new ML (machine learning) Labs, based on Solido’s ML technologies developed over the last 12 years, allows semiconductor companies to collaboratively work with Solido in developing new ML-based EDA products.
Data… Read More
The 4C’s of PCB Design
The diamond jewelry industry encourages customers to focus on the 4C’s — cut, clarity, color, and carats. At the recent PCB Forum conducted by Mentor (a Siemens business) in Santa Clara, I learned that current system design flows also require an emphasis on the 4C’s — collaboration, concurrency, consistency… Read More
Webinar: Getting to Formal Coverage
Facing rapidly growing challenges in getting to respectable coverage, designers have been turning more and more to formal verification, not just to plug gaps but increasingly to take over verification of significant components of the testplan. Which is great, but at the end of the day any approach to verification must be measured… Read More
Virtual Reality
In the world of hardware emulators, virtualization is a hot and sometimes contentious topic. It’s hot because emulators are expensive, creating a lot of pressure to maximize return on that investment through multi-user sharing and 24×7 operation. And of course in this cloud-centric world it doesn’t hurt to promote cloud-like… Read More
Autonomous Vehicles: Tesla, Uber, Lyft, BMW, Intel and Mentor Graphics
I read at least one hour of news every day to keep informed, and I’ve read so many stories about autonomous vehicles that the same, familiar company names continue to dominate the thought leadership. What really caught my attention this month was an announcement about autonomous vehicle technology coming from Mentor Graphics… Read More
The Importance of EM, IR and Thermal Analysis for IC Design – Webinar
Designing an IC has both a logical and physical aspect to it, so while the logic in your next chip may be bug-free and meet the spec, how do you know if the physical layout will be reliable in terms of EM (electro-migration), IR (voltage drops) and thermal issues? EDA software once again comes to our rescue to perform the specific type… Read More
A New Product for DRC and LVS that Lives in the Cloud
Back in the day the Dracula tool from Cadence was king of the DRC and LVS world for physical IC verification, however more recently we’ve seen Calibre from Mentor Graphics as the leader in this realm. Cadence wanted to reclaim their earlier prominence in physical verification so they had to come out with something different… Read More
How to Implement a Secure IoT system on ARMv8-M
This weekend my old garage door opener started to fail, so it was time to shop for a new one at The Home Depot, and much to my surprise I found that Chamberlain offered a Smartphone-controlled WiFi system. Just think of that, controlling my garage door with a Smartphone, but then again the question arose, “What happens when a … Read More


Weebit Nano Reports on 2025 Targets