DACis just 33 days away and who wouldn’t want a cool GoPro camerato play with? Your manager will certainly want you to first check out what’s new at DAC if your job involves getting to RTL signoff on time and within budget. The creative folks at Atrenta have figured out how to attract us with the offer of winning a GoPro camera,… Read More
Electronic Design Automation
IC/Package/Board – Power, Noise and Reliability from ANSYS (Apache DA) at DAC
ANSYS acquired Apache Design Automation back in June 2011and three years later the name “Apache” is being subdued in favor of using just ANSYS. One thing that I noticed right away was a DACfocus on having actual ANSYS customers talk about their hands-on experience using the EDA tools. The following seven customers… Read More
An AMS and RF IC Design Flow
The big three in EDA are well-know for offering AMS and RF IC design flows, but today you also have alternative EDA vendors available that have capable tools, yet are lessor known. This blog will present an overview of the AMS and RF IC design flowoffered by Silvaco, an EDA company with a strong history in TCAD tools like Utmost IV for… Read More
Designing Change into Semiconductor Techonomics
Every industry has famous thought leaders that can summarize where we’ve been and then paint a picture of where we’re headed towards in the future. Often they make statements that become industry expressions, like “Moore’s Law” or the “Internet of Things”. I think that if Synopsys… Read More
More knowledge, less time in FPGA-based prototyping
I recently published a post on LinkedIn titled “Sometimes, you gotta throw it all out” in reference to the innovation process and getting beyond good to better. A prime example has crossed my desk: the new ProtoCompiler software for Synopsys HAPS FPGA-based prototyping systems.
Last week, I spoke with Troy Scott, product marketing… Read More
Tanner EDA Helps Customer Productivity Engineering Increase Efficiency and Lower Cost with No Compromise in Performance
Tanner EDA is making waves at their customer’s sites as the mixed-signal design suite from Tanner EDA, Incentia Design Systems, Inc. and Aldec, Inc. helps ASIC Design House lower cost and increase efficiency with no compromise in performance. In today’s ‘always on’, Internet of Things connected world, the demand for high-performance,… Read More
Carey Robertson: Reliability Checks in Advanced Nodes
Last week I had the pleasure of presenting at the Electronic Design Process Symposium (EDPS) workshop. This was my first time attending and I was very impressed. There were good presentations but I learned as much from the Q&A and the side conversations before/after/breakfast/lunch/etc. If you have the opportunity to attend,… Read More
FinFET & Multi-patterning Need Special P&R Handling
I think by now a lot has been said about the necessity of multi-patterning at advanced technology nodes with extremely low feature size such as 20nm, because lithography using 193nm wavelength of light makes printing and manufacturing of semiconductor design very difficult. The multi-patterning is a novel semiconductor manufacturing… Read More
Dr. Bernard Murphy: My presentation at EDPS 2014
First, I wish there were more conferences/workshops like this. This is much more about sharing ideas and brainstorming than the stark commercialism of DAC. I presented Atrenta’s role in enabling 3[SUP]rd[/SUP]-party IP qualification for the TSMC soft IP library.
My presentation slides are located here:
http://www.eda.org/edps/Papers/5-3%20Bernard%20Murphy.pdf… Read More
Secret of TI’s Success in Analog & Embedded Space
Since I started looking at the ways Texas Instrumentsworks through its strategies, my belief is getting firmed up that this is one company which can always sail through rough waters during downturn and reap rich benefits during upturn. They regularly review their strategies and can predict ahead of time when the water is about … Read More


I Have Seen the Future with ChipAgents Autonomous Root Cause Analysis