Tools, tools, tools. Designs are rapidly changing, JESD204b, Hybrid Memory cube and all other Gigabit serialization schemes are here to stay. RIP DDR. This means board level simulations with respect to firmware (FPGA) are going to be more challenging than ever. Why? you ask, especially if the board layout is simpler? True, but… Read More
Electronic Design Automation
Five Things You Don’t Know About MunEDA
So first the one thing that you do know. MunEDA are based in Munich which makes them German. I have to confess that until I got involved helping them a bit with some marketing stuff that that was about all I knew about them too.
So now five things that you might not know:
1. MunEDA have a much wider customer list that you know and would even… Read More
FinFET Based Designs Made Easy & Reliable
Although semiconductor manufacturing has taken off with FinFET based process technology which provides lucrative payoffs on performance improvement, power reduction and area saving in devices for high density and high performance SoC demand of modern era, apprehensions remain about its reliability due to reduced noise … Read More
EDA for Power Management ICs at DAC
I first met Dundar Dumlugolat Barcelona Design back in 2004, so it was a pleasure to meet with him again at DAClast week and learn more about what his company Magwel has to offer IC designers of power management chips.… Read More
IP Accelerated (Bye Bye EDA 360)
Synopsys has been extremely active, during the last 10 years, not only launching new IP products every year, but also running an ambitious acquisition strategy, with no less than 8 acquisitions. Cascade acquisition bring PCI Express (controller only), when Accelerant bring SerDes (the earth of any PHY IP). The MIPS/Chipidea… Read More
ATopTech’s Legal Woes Continue!
It was a bad sign when an EDA company solicited John Cooley’s help in their legal challenge: See Did Atoptech Just Astroturf Synopsys? Gabe Moretti also did an article: John Cooley Barrister Chastises Synopsys | Gabe on EDA. An even worse sign is when your legal team gets disqualified, especially when that legal team is the top EDA… Read More
MEMS Update from DAC
DAC has an interesting mix of vendors each year, and some of them are outside of the expected digital, analog or IP space. Last Tuesday at DAC I visited a company called Coventor that has three product lines:
- MEMS+ – MEMS design and analysis tools
- CoventorWare – Modeling and simulation for MEMS devices
- SEMulator 3D–
An Update on Calibre at DAC
Even though I live just 7 miles away from the Mentor Graphics corporate office in Oregon, I visited their DAC suite in San Francisco last week to get an update on Calibrefrom Michael White. The Calibre tools are used during IC verification and sign-off by performing DRC (Design Rule Checking) and LVS (Layout Versus Schematic).… Read More
A Re-look at TI’s Businesses, Strategies & Future
In recent days I’ve seen several long discussions about Texas Instrumentslosing its grip in semiconductor industry when it came out of a business it was strong in, i.e. wireless business. It seems the semiconductor community has not digested the fact that TI, very rightly, came out of the OMAP business at the right time. The smartphone… Read More
Embedded Vision Summit
I was a the embedded vision conference last week. Jeff Beir, the founder of the embedded vision alliance gave an introduction to the field. The conference was much bigger than previous years and almost everyone is designing some sort of vision product. Half of your brain is used for vision so it goes without saying that vision requires… Read More


Website Developers May Have Most to Fear From AI