The automotive industry has reached a new era marked by giant initiatives like infotainment, connected car and semi-autonomous vehicles. And no one seems more excited than the MCU guys who have been a part and parcel of in-car electronics for the past two decades. However, the humble microcontroller is going through a profound… Read More
Electronic Design Automation
Got FPGA Timing Closure Problems?
I had a meeting with Harn Hua Ng, the CEO of Plunify, a couple of weeks ago. They are an EDA company that I’d never heard of. Partially that is because they only play in the FPGA space, a country I visit less frequently than SoC land. Plus, they are based in Singapore, a country I have only been to a couple of times in my life.
Plunify… Read More
Who Leads Semiconductor Innovation?
Semiconductor business is highly dependent on technology and that changes very rapidly in the semiconductor space. It’s important to recognize the importance of research and innovation activities in this space. In my last article on 7nm technology node, one respondent commented, very rightly, “It’s important to have competition… Read More
Vietnam: Rising Star in Electronics
I recently returned from a trip to Southeast Asia, including Vietnam. The trip was for pleasure, not business, but I could not help but notice the boom in economic activity. The coastal cities of Hai Phong, Da Nang and NHA Trang were trying to outdo each other in building hotels, bridges and amusement parks – largely to cater to foreign… Read More
A Brief History of CLKDA: Every Picosecond Counts Below 28nm
One thing to point out is that the CLK of CLKDA are the initials of the founders, they are not focused on clocks! I’m sure you can guess what DA stands for, although it is also the last two letters of the fourth founder’s name.
They have been in existence since 2005, backed by Atlas Ventures and Morgenthaler. They are headquartered… Read More
High Level Synthesis Gets Stronger
High Level Synthesis (HLS) tools have been around for at least two decades now, and you may recall that about one year ago Cadence acquired Forte. The whole promise of HLS is to provide more design and verification productivity by raising the design abstraction from RTL code up to SystemC, C or C++ code. With any acquisition it is natural… Read More
Synchronizer Optimization 101
A webinar presented Last week introduced two free aids to evaluating synchronizer Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF). The first, MetaACE LTD, is used to characterize the intrinsic parameters needed to calculate MTBF (tau and Tw). This limited version of MetaACE supports up to 250 circuit nodes, which is enough for a typical C-only-extracted… Read More
Analyzing Power Nets Early and Often, a New White Paper
One of the big challenges in designing ICs today is designing a robust power net capable of delivering necessary current levels to all areas of the die. Getting it wrong can, of course, lead to circuit failures that range from non-functional silicon, through intermittent performance and functional problems, to early EM-driven… Read More
IoT Sensor Node Designs Call for Highly Integrated Flows
Applications for IoT sensors are becoming more sophisticated, especially for industrial usage. Building optimal sensors for different applications requires multi-domain design, optimization and verification flows. The sensor devices are usually MEMS, and as such have electrical properties that need to be tailored to … Read More
SPIE Advanced Lithography Preview
Next week is the SPIE Advanced Lithography Conference in San Jose, the premier conference for advanced lithography used to produce state-of-the-art semiconductors. Last year I blogged after the conference about some of the key points I heard at the conference and this year I plan to do the same.
Disaggregating AI Compute to Break the Tokens Barrier