We might wish that all our design automation needs could be handled by pre-packaged vendor tool features available at the push of a button, but that never was and never will be the case. In the language of crass commercialism, there may be no broad market for those features, even though you consider that analysis absolutely essential.… Read More
Electronic Design Automation
Attending DAC in Austin for Free
I love getting a good deal, and free is always compelling, so how about attending DAC in Austin for free this year? Sound too good to be true? Thanks to the generosity of three EDA companies – ATop Tech, ClioSoft and OneSpin, now you can can attend parts of DAC for free by registering here. This is now the 8th year that the I LOVE DAC… Read More
Software-Driven Verification and Portable Stimulus
I was at every single lunch at DVCon, not because the food was that great (it wasn’t bad) but because the topics were all interesting. The Wednesday lunch, hosted by Cadence, was a panel on software-driven verification and portable stimulus, moderated by Frank Schirrmeister (a different role for Frank – he’s usually a panel member… Read More
Speaking about the Internet of Trust on April 21
Five minutes to ruin a reputation built over 20 years, as Warren Buffett put it, holds true in personal relationships. On the Internet of Things, reputations can disappear in five seconds. How do we move from merely intelligent Things to a level where devices have to be Trusted?… Read More
Mentor Extends Verification Offering!
With verification consuming more and more of the design cycle and the increasingly complex industry standard interfaces that are now common place, Verification IP (VIP) is again a trending topic. Back in my IP days the age old question was: Is it better to use VIP from the IP vendor? Because you know it will work, right? Or is it better… Read More
Apple Protects Its Designs With Custom Silicon And You Can Too
In the February 22-28 issue of Bloomberg Businessweek magazine, Johny Srouji, Apple’s senior vice president for hardware technologies, discusses Apple’s winning strategy of owning its own silicon. It began with the acquisition a Silicon Valley chip startup called P.A. Semi in April of 2008 and since then, Apple has never looked… Read More
Is Smart Bluetooth de facto standard for IoT Wearable, Beacons, Fitness and Health ?
Synopsys launch BTLE PHY IP, qualified by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) and meeting compliance with the Bluetooth® Smart v4.2 specification. The company has built a partnership with Mindtree to provide a complete solution, integrating Synopsys’ Bluetooth Smart PHY IP and Mindtree’s production-proven BlueLitE… Read More
Design units come to faster Riviera-PRO release
For the latest incremental improvements to its Riviera-PRO functional verification platform, Aldec has turned to streamlining random constraint performance. The new Riviera-PRO 2016.02 release also is now fully supported on Windows 10 and adds a new debugger tool.… Read More
Verdi Update and NVIDIA on Verification Compiler
Synopsys hosted a lunch session on Thursday of DVCon. Michael Sanie of Synopsys opened the session, with a look back at the last DVCon where he had talked about Verification Compiler (VC) and extending the platform to Verification Continuum, which adds emulation and FPGA-based prototyping (HAPS – there was a very cool HAPS demo… Read More
Mentor at DVCon – Visualize This
Steve Bailey entertained us during lunch on Tuesday with a talk on debug and visualization in the Mentor platform. Steve is based in Colorado, so had to spend the first part of his talk gloating about their Super Bowl win, but I guess he deserves that.
On a more technical note, he showed us a familiar survey they had completed with the… Read More


Quantum Computing Technologies and Challenges