This is a new brick that Synopsys brings to build FD-SOI credibility. We have talked at Semiwiki about FD-SOI technology developed by the LETI and STM, and recently endorsed by Samsung Foundry, offering a more than credible second source to STM. And we have said that the FD-SOI introduction will need to be supported by EDA and IP vendors… Read More
Electronic Design Automation
Non-separation of power and performance
How much power does a system consume? The simplistic path to power estimation for a system used to be tossing a few metrics – standby, typical, worst case, with figures pulled from a datasheet, simulation, or physical measurement – into a spreadsheet. After filling the remaining holes with SWAG (scientific wild-ass guesses), … Read More
IoT Breakfast Panel at DAC
Tuesday morning at DAC I enjoyed a free breakfast courtesy of Synopsysand GLOBALFOUNDRIESwhere I learned more about the emerging market of IoT, and what it means to semiconductor, EDA and IP vendors. Panelists included: Semico Research, HP, Synopsys, GLOBALFOUNDRIES and Broadcom. … Read More
Ceaseless Field Test for Safety Critical Devices
While focus of the semiconductor industry has shifted to DACin this week and unfortunately I couldn’t attend due to some of my management exams, in my spare time I was browsing through some of the webpages of Cadenceto check their new offerings (although they have a great list of items to showcase at DAC) and to my pleasure I came across… Read More
High Sigma Yield Analysis and Optimization at DAC
When I hear the phrase “high sigma” I think of the EDA vendor Solido, however at DAC on Monday I visited another EDA company called MunEDAthat has several products of interest to transistor-level IC designers. I was able to speak with three different people from MunEDA and here’s what I learned.… Read More
AMS Panel: Micronas, Infineon, AMD, STMicro
Synopsyshosted an AMS Luncheon panel today at DACin the Westin Hotel and invited four customers to talk about their actual design challenges and experiences. I’ve typed up my notes from this event.… Read More
Affordable AMS EDA Tools at DAC
First thing at DACtoday I met with Greg Lebsack of Tanner EDA to ask about what’s new in the past year for his EDA company. Here are my meeting notes, so there’s not much prose for my DAC blogs this year.
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Gary Smith at DAC
Gary Smith once again wore his signature white coat and extolled the virtues of system level design and automation. The room at the Intercontinental was packed, and the folks in the hallway outside were noisy as usual, eager for the party to start after Gary finished.… Read More
Active Power Management in UPF Using SPICE, VHDL-AMS or Verilog-AMS
My former co-worker, Kenneth Bakalar at Mentor Graphics is an expert in AMS modeling languages and UPFmethodology, so he recently teamed up with Eric Jeandeau to author an interesting white paper: Interpreting UPF for a Mixed-Signal Design Under Test. This white paper is based on a presentation made at DVCon earlier this year.… Read More
Context Aware Library Models for Improved Static Analysis Accuracy
Digital semiconductor design flows predominantly use library models (typically verilog and liberty formats) for static analyses. Design sizes continue to grow and geometry continues to shrink. Demand for superior performance continue to increase. Accuracy of the library models has become more critical than ever before … Read More
TSMC N3 Process Technology Wiki