It goes without saying that VIPs really play a Very Important Part in SoC verification today. It has created a significant semiconductor market segment in the fabless world of SoC and IP design & verification. In order to meet the aggressive time-to-market for IPs and SoCs, it’s imperative that readymade VIPs which are proven… Read More
Electronic Design Automation
Analog FastSPICE Update at DAC
Tuesday night over dinner at DAC I was able to chat with Ravi Subramanian, CEO of Berkeley DA, recently acquired by Mentor Graphics back on March 21st. This acquisition provided Mentor with an Analog FastSPICE circuit simulator to round out its collection of simulators.… Read More
PCI Express 4 specification just released for PCI-SIG DevCon
I have been alerted by a blog from Moshik Rubin from Cadence: PCI-SIG has finally released the PCIe 4.0 rev 0.3 specification for members’ review, on time for the PCI-SIG developers conference last June in Santa Clara. Since the early days of PCI Express in 2005, Denali (at that time, now Cadence) has positioned the PCIe VIP… Read More
RTL Signoff Update from #51DAC
In the early days of Customer Owned Tooling (COT) the signoff was done at the GDS II, or physical level. Today, however we see the trend of RTL signoff instead because of the EDA tools and methodology available. At DACearlier this month I met with Piyush Sanchetiof Atrenta to get an update on what’s new with RTL signoff.… Read More
Synopsys Revamps Formal at #51DAC
Synopsys announced verification compiler a couple of months ago and dropped hints about their static and formal verification. They haven’t announced anything much for a couple of years and it turns out that the reason was that they decided that the technology that they had, some internally developed and some acquired, … Read More
Virtual Prototype Update from #51DAC
EDA industry pundit Gary Smithhas been talking about the electronics industry adopting an ESL tool flow for decades, so it was my pleasure to speak with Bill Neifertof Carbon Design Systemsat DAC this month because his company has been offering both tools and models that enable a virtual prototyping design flow.… Read More
What can you do when your fab closes down?
A recent report from IC Insights described 72 wafer fabs that have closed in the past five years. Eight more plants have gone in 2014, showing the trend is continuing.
This leaves their customers with a problem: what can they do when the fab shuts down? Some may recognise that their own technology has reached the end of its life and work… Read More
High Level Synthesis update from #51DAC
Every since Synopsys dominated the logic synthesis market in the 1980’s we’ve had something called HLS – High Level Synthesis, meaning something higher than what Design Compiler can understand as input. At DACthis year I met with Mark Milligan of Calypto to get an update on what’s new with HLS. I first… Read More
Standard Cell, IO and Hard IP Validation update
Every SoC team uses libraries of cells to get their new product to market quicker: Standard Cells, IO Cells and Hard IP blocks. One immediate question that comes to my mind is, “How clean are these cells?” Validating your cell libraries first makes sense, and will ensure that there are fewer surprises as your chip gets… Read More
IP Management Update at DAC
To keep track of my business and personal finances I use software from Quicken, but for an SoC with hundreds of IP blocks how do you keep track of everything? The answer is found in the growing field of EDA tools for IP management, and at DACearlier this month I sat down with Neil Handof Methodics to get an update on what the industry trends… Read More
From Prompts to Prompt Engineering to Knowing Ourselves