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
Electronic Design Automation
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
Thermal Analysis for 3D SoC Integration
The first time that I saw a DRAM in a ceramic package running on a tester I made the mistake of touching my finger to the metal lid, scorching my finger and teaching me a lesson that ICs can run extremely hot. I’ve read a lot the past few years about 3D IC design, and immediately my mind becomes curious about how an engineer would go… Read More
The Rosetta Stone of Lithography
At major EDA events, CEDA (the IEEE council on EDA, I guess you already know what that bit stands for) hosts a lunch and presentation for attendees and others. This week was ICCAD and the speaker was Lars Liebmann of IBM on The Escalating Design Impact of Resolution-Challenged Lithography. Lars decided to give us a whirlwind tour … Read More
IoT begets silicon, interoperability, and standards
The Internet of Things is on every technology mind these days, but what does it mean for the EDA community? Dennis Brophy of Mentor Graphics says the billions of things we are hearing about will not happen unless we find a way to build a lot more things, efficient things, and connected things. He has more thoughts in our recent interview.… Read More
Meeting the Challenges of Designing Internet of Things SoCs with the Right Design Flow and IP
Connecting “things” to the Internet and enabling sensing and remote control, data gathering, transmission, and analysis improves many areas: safety and quality of life, healthcare, manufacturing and service delivery, energy efficiency, and the environment. The concept of the Internet of Things (IoT) is quickly becoming… Read More
Design Methodology and its Impact on the Future of Electronics
Today at the Semisrael Expo 2013 (in Israel of course) Ajoy Bose gave a keynote on how design methodology will impact electronics. The big pictures is that microelectronics is driven by some major disruptive forces and, as a result, technology and industry are evolving dramatically, which creates a need for research and innovation… Read More
Cadence Design Systems’ Shares Are Surprisingly Cheap
In the third and final (for now) part of this series on the EDA design tool vendors, I’d like to take a closer look at Cadence Design Systems. This is probably the most interesting of the three from both an industry perspective as well as an investment perspective for a variety of reasons. With that said I’d like to first provide some … Read More
A Brief History of eSilicon
eSilicon Corporation was founded in 2000 with Jack Harding as the founding CEO and Seth Neiman of Crosspoint Venture Partners as the first venture investor and outside Board member. They both remain involved in the company today, with Jack continuing as CEO and Seth now serving as Chairman of the Board.
Both Harding and Neiman brought… Read More
Social Media at Synopsys
When I talk about social media and mention Synopsys you may quickly think of Karen Bartleson, the Senior Director of Community Marketing, because she:
- Blogs and podcasts
- Created the best interactive DAC game ever in 2013 using barcodes and points
- Tweets @karenbartleson
- Is president of the IEEE Standards Association
- Has over


AI RTL Generation versus AI RTL Verification