PCI Express 3.0 specification is 1000 pages long. Most of us, and most of the designers integrating PCIe gen-3 into their latest ASIC, FPGA or system will probably never read it completely, or even open it. In fact, they don’t need to read it completely, but they should care about one point, whether they buy an ASSP or a PCIe design IP:… Read More
Electronic Design Automation
Atrenta CEO on RTL Signoff
Most EDA companies sell tools into the main chip design and implementation flow such as simulation, synthesis, place & route, custom design and mask data prep. Atrenta is different. Nothing the company sells is in this main design flow. Instead, Atrenta focuses on pre-synthesis design analysis and optimization. Everything… Read More
AMD Reduces Power by 20%
Steve Kommrusch of AMD wrote a white paper with Calypto on how AMD reduced power by 20% on the Jaguar SoC using Calypto’s PowerPro. Dan Nenni blogged about it on SemiWiki back in February here. And now, drumroll, Steve will present the story live and in person at DAC, on Monday June 3rd at 3pm and on Wednesday June 5th at 11am. This… Read More
Cadence Technical Sessions @ #50DAC (Free Food!)
Cadence is a DAC anchor, everyone will visit their booth, so lets look at their technical sessions and put our agendas together. Lets start with the breakfast/lunch sessions because Cadence usually puts out quite a spread, we all gotta eat and free food tastes even better:
Has “Timing Signoff Innovation” Become an Oxymoron? What… Read More
Carbon CEO on Advanceed ARM based SoC Design!
Carbon Design drives a lot of traffic to SemiWiki. Actually, it’s ARM driving traffic to the Carbon landing page since Carbon and ARM work closely together. When we blog about designing with ARM IP droves of people click over. Seriously, DROVES of people. Rick Lucier has deep EDA experience and has led Carbon as CEO for the … Read More
Methodics CEO on Managing Design Quality!
Methodics is new to SemiWiki and I have to tell you I’m really enjoying working with them. Their office is in a great location and the inovation spirit runs strong. Simon Butler is an interesting guy. He first started in EDA with HLD (acquired by Cadence) and was a founder at Sabio Labs (acquired by Magma). In between those startups… Read More
Power, Noise and Reliability Consideration for Advanced Automotive and Networking ICs
I love it when my Acura goes months and months without any major repair issue or computer-related glitches. Cars or networks only become reliable when they are designed and built for reliability. Freescale designs SoCs for advanced automotive and networking applications, and their engineers know much about the topics of power,… Read More
Chip and I/O Modeling for System-level Power Noise Analysis and Optimization
Cornelia Golovanovworks at LSI Corp in Pennsylvania and is an EMI expert that provides EDA tool and methodology advise to design groups. She earned a PhD in microelectronics and radioelectricity from the Institut national polytechnique de Grenoble, and joined Lucent out of school 12 years ago. We had a chance to talk by phone about… Read More
Jasper Low Power Verification App
Today, Jasper announced their new Jasper-Gold Low Power Verification App. This is focused on verifying low power designs with multiple power domains, voltage islands, power shutoff, clock shutoff, and all the other techniques used for reducing power. Of course power is the main driver of SoC design these days, whether it is for… Read More
SOCFIT, Circuit Level Soft Error Analysis
I blogged recently about reliability testing with high energy neutron beams. This is good for getting basic reliability data but it is not really a useful tool for worrying about reliability while the chip is still being designed and something can be done about it.
That is where IROC Technologies SOCFIT tool comes in. It takes all… Read More
Rapidus, IBM, and the Billion-Dollar Silicon Sovereignty Bet