VIA Telecom, who makes CDMA base-band processor chips, picked ClioSoft SOS for use by its analog mixed-signal design teams. Like many such teams they use Cadence’s Virtuoso layout platform. ClioSoft’s SOS is seamlessly integrated into Virtuoso so that designers don’t really need to spend much time worrying… Read More
Electronic Design Automation
Minimize the Cost of Testing ARM® Processor-based Designs and Other Multicore SoCs
On my first job out of college as an IC design engineer I was surprised to discover that a major cost of chips was in the amount of time spent on the tester before being shipped. That is still true today, so how would you keep your tester time down, test coverage high and with a minimum number of pins when using multiple processors on a single… Read More
Testing an IC Sandwich
At a lovely, but chilly, 3DIncites awards breakfast during SEMICON West, I saw Mentor Graphics win in two of five categories (Calibre 3DSTACK was the other winner). Afterwards, I talked to Steve Pateras, the product marketing director of Mentor’s test solutions about Tessent Memory BIST, which was one of the winners. I asked Pateras… Read More
Aldec Verifies Compatibility of Northwest Logic’s PCI Express Cores with HES-7™ SoC/ASIC Prototyping Platform
Henderson, Nevada – July 11, 2013 –Aldec, Inc., a pioneer in mixed HDL language simulation and hardware-assisted verification solutions, today announced that engineers incorporating high-speed PCI Express data transmission into their SoC and ASIC designs can accelerate their time-to-market utilizing Northwest Logic… Read More
Data Centers accounts for 2 to 3% of WW Energy Consumption!
Do you think this figure will go down? Considering the massive move to Mobile equipment, pushing to de-localize your storage medium to instead use the cloud capabilities, and looking at the huge number of people buying smartphone and tablet in emerging countries, no doubt that Data Center related energy consumption is expected… Read More
Analysis of HLS Results Made Easier
In a recent article I discussed how easy it was to debug SystemC source code as shown in a video published on YouTube by Forte Design Systems. I also commented on the usefulness of the well-produced Forte video series. Today, I am reviewing another video in that series on analyzing high-level synthesis (HLS) results.
Cynthesizer… Read More
A Goldmine of Tester Data
Yesterday at SEMICON West I attended an interesting talk about how to use the masses of die test data to improve silicon yield. The speaker was Dr. Martin Keim, from Mentor Graphics.
First of all, he pointed out that with advanced process nodes (45nm, 32nm, and 28nm), and new technologies like FinFETs, we get design-sensitive defects.… Read More
Best Practices for Using DRC, LVS and Parasitic Extraction – on YouTube
EDA companies produce a wealth of content to help IC engineers get the best out of their tools through several means:
- Reference Manuals
- User Guides
- Tutorials
- Workshops
- Seminars
- Training Classes
- Phone Support
- AE visits
Towards the 0 DPM Test Goal
At Semicon yesterday I attended Mentor’s presentation on improving test standards. Joe Sawicki was meant to present but he was unable to get a flight due to the ongoing disruption at SFO after last weekend’s crash. I just flew in myself and it is odd to see the carcase of that 777 just beside the runway we landed on.
The … Read More
Calypto 2013 Report
Each year Calypto runs a survey of end-users. This year’s survey and report has two parts, power reduction and high level synthesis (HLS).
The topics covered are:
- survey methodology and demographics
- top methods used to reduce power
- engineering time spent on specfiic RTL tasks to reduce power
- plans to deploy RTL power reduction


Intel to Compete with Broadcom and Marvell in the Lucrative ASIC Business