Now a day, a SoC can be highly complex, having 100s of IPs performing various functionalities along with multi-core CPUs on it. Managing power, performance and area of the overall semiconductor design in the SoC becomes an extremely challenging task. Even if the IPs and various design blocks are highly optimized within themselves,… Read More
Electronic Design Automation
Webinar: Parasitic Debugging made easy!
We cordially invite you to attend this webinar and learn how to quickly debug post layout designs. Concept Engineering is a privately held company based in Freiburg, Germany. It was, founded in 1990 to develop and market innovative schematic generation and viewing technology for use with logic synthesis, verification, test … Read More
Simplified Assertion Adoption with SystemVerilog 2012
SystemVerilog as an assertion language improved and simplified with the 2012 version compared to the 2005 version. I recently viewed a webinar on SystemVerilog 2012 by consultant Srinivasan Venkataramanan, who works at CVC Pvt. Ltd. There’s been a steep learning-curve for assertions in the past, and hopefully you’ll… Read More
Conquering errors in the hierarchy of FPGA IP
FPGA design today involves not only millions of gates on the target device, but thousands of source files with RTL and constraints, often generated by multiple designers or third party IP providers. With modules organized in some logical way describing the design, designers brace themselves for synthesis and a possible avalanche… Read More
Because X doesn’t always mark the exact spot
Digital hardware has a habit of deciding – based on the bias and behavior of transistors – to drive outputs to a 0, or a 1, or if commanded a high-impedance Z state. SystemVerilog recognizes a fourth state: X, the “unknown” state a simulator has trouble inferring.
Simulators have a choice. Under X-optimism, they can convert the unknown… Read More
Lithography: Future Technologies
The first part of Lars Liebmann’s ICCAD keynote about lithography was on the changes in lithography that have to us to where we are today. In some ways it was an explanation of why we have the odd design rules, double patterning etc that we have in 20nm and 16nm processes. The second part of his talk was a look forward to how we might… Read More
Semiconductor Process Development: A View from the Trenches at IEDM
There is always a lot of posturing and pontificating when semiconductor executives talk about the future of process development. They are fighting an air war of perception and investor expectations, so naturally want to make sure they have plenty to brag about. But, as we pointed out recently with Intel’s problems at 14nm, moving… Read More
Front-End Design Summit: Physically Aware Design
Save closure time and boost performance by incorporating knowledge of physically aware design early into your front-end design implementation flow
With the adoption of advanced process nodes, design closure is becoming increasingly difficult due to the lack of convergence between the front end and the back end of the register-transfer… Read More
Better License Usage vs More Licenses
When you see a new product announcement from an EDA company, it is always put in terms that make it seem as if the engineer is sitting at his or her desktop with a big server and is running the new tool to wondrous effect. But the reality in the real world is that most companies have a computing infrastructure of server farms, often several… Read More
Signoff Summit and Voltus
Yesterday Cadence had an all-day Signoff Summit where they talked about the tools that they have for signoff in advanced nodes. Well, of course, those tools work just fine in non-advanced nodes too, but at 20nm and 16nm there are FinFETs, double patterning, timing impacts from dummy metal fill, a gazillion corners to be analyzed… Read More
Rapidus, IBM, and the Billion-Dollar Silicon Sovereignty Bet