In one of my favorite movies, Brad Pitt utters the only question that matters in baseball or technology management in the face of uncertainty: “Okay, good. What’s the problem?” Not surprisingly in that scene, as the question circles the table of experts used to doing things the old way, not a single one can answer it correctly in the… Read More
Electronic Design Automation
TSMC Open Innovation Platform Forum, October 1st
One of TSMC’s two big Silicon Valley events each year is the Open Innovation Platform (OIP) Forum. This year it is on Tuesday October 1st. It is in the San Jose Convention Center and starts at 9am (registration opens at 8am). Pre-registration to attend is now open here or click on the image to the right.
From 9.10 to 9.40 is the … Read More
What Mentor Said at ITC
At the ITC test conference in early September, Mentor made three announcements. ITC is a big event for Mentor’s test group, and where they usually roll out their new tools and capabilities. The indefatigable Steve Pateras was captured on film describing them.
I’ve summarize Mentor’s three announcements and added… Read More
SystemVerilog Assertions and Functional Coverage
Ashok Mehtahas designed processors at DEC and Intel, managed ASIC vendor relationships, verified networks SoCs, directed engineers at AMCC, and used SystemVerilog since it’s inception. He recently authored a book: SystemVerilog Assertions and Functional Coverage. The book is available in both hardcover and Kindle… Read More
But I Never Have Seen a Synchronizer Failure
You may say, “Why should I worry about synchronizer failures when I have never seen one fail in a product?” Perhaps you feel that the dual-rank synchronizer used by many designers makes your design safe. Furthermore, those chips that have occasional unexpected failures never show any forensic evidence of synchronizer failures.… Read More
A Brief History of Silvaco
Silvaco is the leading supplier of TCAD software, and a major supplier of EDA software for circuit simulation and design of analog, mixed-signal and RF integrated circuits.
The company was founded in 1984 by Dr. Ivan Pesic. The initial product, Utmost, quickly became the industry standard for parameter extraction, device characterization… Read More
Develop A Complete System Prototype Using Vista VP
Yes, it means complete hardware and software integration, debugging, verification, optimization of performance and power and all other operational aspects of an electronic system in semiconductor design. In modern SoCs, several IPs, RTL blocks, software modules, firmware and so on sit together on a single chip, hence making… Read More
Dassault’s Simulation Lifecycle Management
The first thing to realize about Dassault’s Simulation Lifecycle Management platform is that in the non-IC world where Dassault primarily operates, simulation doesn’t just mean functional verification or running Spice. It is anything during the design that produces analytical data. All of that data is important… Read More
Designing Power Management ICs
With all the focus in design on SoCs in the latest sexy process (Hi-K Metal Gate! FinFETs!) it is easy to forget all the other chips that go into a system. When we say “system on a chip” there are actually very few systems that really get everything onto a single chip. One of the big areas that usually cannot go on the latest… Read More
Who is Blogging at Cadence?
As a blogger in the EDA industry I get to write every week, however I also end up reading every blog on SemiWiki plus multiple other sites to keep current on what’s happening in our business. I thought that it would be informative to look at Cadence Design Systems and how they are using blogging to talk not just about their own EDA… Read More
Musk’s new job as Samsung Fab Manager – Can he disrupt chip making? Intel outside