One of the things about MEMS devices is that they almost always live on a chip that also contains the electronics necessary to process the output from the sensor. For example, an on-chip accelerometer for a car airbag deployment will contain the electronics necessary to process the signal from the sensor and end up with something… Read More
Electronic Design Automation
Designing the Right Architecture Using HLS
With the advent of HLS tools, general notion which comes to mind is that okay, there’s an automated tool which can optimize your design description written in C++/SystemC and provide you a perfect RTL. In real life, it’s not so, any design description needs hardware designer’s expertise to adopt right algorithm and architecture… Read More
Optimize Your Interconnect & Design at System Level for Best Results
As the SoC design size, complexity and functionality keeps on increasing with multiple IPs packed together and design time and time-to-market keeps on decreasing amid critical constraints on PPA, there is no other alternative than to do the design first-time-right not to miss the window of opportunity. And that could be possible… Read More
Taiwan Trip Report: The Coming Simulation Crisis!
Even though the flight to Taiwan is somewhat difficult, I really do enjoy my trips to Hsinchu. In addition to the top two pure-play foundries being there, one of the top SoC companies (MediaTek) and many of the leading semiconductor design companies are there as well. All are a quick taxi ride from my home away from home, the Hotel Royal.… Read More
Expert Tool to View and Debug Design Issues at Spice Level
Spice view of a design, block or fragment of the design is probably the lowest level of functional description of a circuit in terms of transistors, resistors, capacitors, interconnect and so on, which in several ways acts as an ultimate proof of pudding for any semiconductor design before manufacturing. However, it’s generally… Read More
Transceiver Verification of a 20nm Altera FPGA Device
FPGA devices are a great way to drive silicon technology development because they contain both digital and analog IP, along with sophisticated IO cells. The highest performance IOs are transceivers, and Altera has recently designed the Arria 10 device family to include up to 96 transceivers, using a 20nm technology that can achieve… Read More
Smart Collaborative Design Reduces Business Risk
The semiconductor design industry is ever challenged with increasing chip density, manufacturing complexity with cutting-edge technologies, accommodating multiple IPs with different functionalities from various sources, optimizing power, performance and cost, maximizing manufacturability and reliability and still… Read More
A Comprehensive Power Analysis Solution for SoC+Package
Since power has become a critical factor in semiconductor chip design, the stress is towards decreasing supply voltage to reduce power consumption. However, the threshold voltage to switch devices cannot go down beyond a certain limit and these results in an extremely narrow margin for noise between the two. And that gets further… Read More
Design & EDA Collaboration Advances Mixed-Signal Verification through VCS AMS
Last week it was a rare opportunity for me to attend a webinar where an SoC design house, a leading IP provider and a leading EDA tool provider joined together to present on how the tool capabilities are being used for advanced mixed-signal simulation of large designs, faster with accuracy. It’s always been a struggle to combine design… Read More
EDA Plus ARM Equals Big Views!
In looking at the SemiWiki analytics, one of the top search terms that brings traffic to our site is ARM, just about anything ARM. In fact, that’s what the next SemiWiki book will be about. Yes, ARM is that interesting. While EDA is also one of our top search terms, EDA+ARM will get the most views, absolutely. And let’s face it, bloggers… Read More


CEO Interview with Aftkhar Aslam of yieldWerx