Much awaited, automatic tool for DRM (Design Rule Manual) and DRC (Design Rule Check) deck creation is here now! I am particularly excited to know about this because I had been hearing for its need (in different context) from the designers with whom I was working to improve their design productivity through the use of our EDA tools… Read More
Electronic Design Automation
Winning in Monte Carlo: Managing Simulations Under Variability and Reliability
I recently talked to Trent McConaghy about his book on variation-aware design of custom ICs and the #50DAC tutorial we are doing:
Winning in Monte Carlo: Managing Simulations Under Variability and Reliability.
Trent is the Solido Chief Technology Officer, an engaging speaker, one of the brightest minds in EDA, and someone who… Read More
Calypto, in Three Part Harmony
As Julius Caesar said, “Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres.” All Gaul is divided into 3 parts. Calypto is similar with three product lines that work together to provide a system level approach to SoC design. Two of those product lines are not unique, in the sense that similar capabilities are available from a handful… Read More
Prototyping Over 100 Million ASIC Gates Capacity
Most SoCs today are being prototyped in FPGA hardware before committing to costly IC fabrication. You could just design and build your own FPGA prototyping system, or instead choose something off the shelf and then concentrate on your core competence of SoC design.
Thanks to the FPGA vendors like Xilinx we now have FGPA prototyping… Read More
Is my Library or Semi IP really OK to use?
The tremendous growth in IC and SoC design complexity has now enabled engineers to place bilions of transistors on a single chip. To make that growth possible design teams resort to using libraries and semi IP provided by other groups in their company, or outside IP vendors. To lower risk, you must know that the IP being used in your… Read More
Forte CEO on Design and Verification Complexity
Sean Dart’s first DAC (Las Vegas) was as a customer in 1989. Designs were hitting 15,000 gates back then so he was looking for better schematic editors and simulators for gate level design. Fast forward 25 years and Sean’s customers are doing 15,000,000 gate subsystems and that number is growing steadily every year.… Read More
Modern SoC designs require a placement- and routing-aware ECO solution to close timing
As an applications engineer for over 15 years supporting physical design tools that enable implementation closure, I have seen the complexity of timing closure grow continuously from one process node to the next. At 28nm, the number of scenarios for timing sign-off has increased to the extent that is way beyond the number that … Read More
Design IP round #2: after road-test, time for the race
Design IP, at least Interface IP, is about 15 years old, but the market was made of one large provider – Synopsys- with many small vendors around. Chip makers were not very comfortable with this picture, especially the Tier 1 considering that the risk (to see the big one being acquired by one of their direct competitor, say Samsung… Read More
Improving Design Practices for an Image Sensor IDM
With nearly twenty five years in business, Tanner EDA Application Engineers have seen a wide range of support requests. One consistent topic area is around design data management and design reuse. In one recent instance, our customer, an IDM who produces imaging sensors for infrared vision systems, called on Tanners AE team for… Read More
How To Design a TSMC 20nm Chip with Cadence Tools
Every process node these days has a new “gotcha” that designers need to be aware of. In some ways this has always been the case but the changes used to be gradual. But now each process node has something discontinuously different. At 20nm the big change is double patterning. At 14/16nm it is FinFET.
Rahul Deokar and John… Read More


Disaggregating LLM Inference: Inside the SambaNova Intel Heterogeneous Compute Blueprint