The fabless revolution in the digital semiconductor industry is no more, with just a few integrated device manufacturers (IDMs) remaining on the playing field, it is now the normal way to do business. However, the learning curve for each new process node continues as it always has, with a host of new technical challenges for the … Read More
Electronic Design Automation
Is debugging a task, or a continuous process?
Early in my so-called EE career, I sat in a workshop led by the director of quality for the Ford truck plant in Louisville, KY, where “Quality is Job #1.” At that time, they were gaining experience in electronic control modules (ECMs) for fuel efficiency and emissions control. Who better to transfer the secrets of Crosby and Deming… Read More
Modeling TSV, IBIS-AMI and SERDES with HSPICE
The HSPICE circuit simulator has been around for decades and is widely used by IC designers worldwide, so I watched the HSPICE SIG by video today and summarize what happened. Engineers from Micron, Altera and AMD presented on how they are using HSPICE to model TSVs, IBiS-AMI models and SERDES, respectively.… Read More
Cadence ♥ ClioSoft!
Taking a look at the coveted presentation slots at the CDNLive Conference next month you will see a presentation on Data Management for Mixed-Signal Designs by one of my favorite EDA companies, ClioSoft. Great software, great support, great people, and with customers that are willing to talk publicly about their tools and technology.… Read More
SPICE Circuit Simulation at STMicroelectronics
At the 2010 DACI moderated a panel session on SPICE and Fast SPICE circuit simulation, and one of the panelists was PierLuigi Dagliofrom STMicroelectronics. To get an update on SPICE circuit simulation at ST I read a PDF document at Mentor titled: Improving the Quality of SPICE Simulation Results with Eldo Premier at ST.
ST does … Read More
TSMC ♥ Cadence
In a shocking move TSMC now favors Cadence over Synopsys! Okay, not so shocking, especially after the Synopsys acquisitions of Magma, Ciranova, SpringSoft, and the resulting product consolidations. Not shocking to me at all since my day job is Strategic Foundry Relationships for emerging EDA, IP, and fabless companies.
Rick… Read More
SHIELDing the Android GPU developer in C
Repeat after me: SoCs are paperweights if they can’t be programmed. Succeeding with a new part today means supporting a robust developer program to attract and engage as many creatives as possible. NVIDIA has teamed up with Mentor Graphics in just such an adventure. If you read just the press release, you may have missed the real … Read More
Mentor Shines at DVCon
Mentor Graphics will be all over DVCon next week (February 25-28) at the DoubleTree hotel in San Jose.
In addition to attending all the panels, tutorials, posters, and the keynote, you can visit Mentor in booth 901 on the exhibit floor.
Here’s the lineup of Mentor-related events:… Read More
ISSCC 2013: Circuit Design Using FinFETs!
One of the privilages of blogging for SemiWiki is invitations to the top conferences around the world including the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in San Francisco this week. Amazing, this conference is older than I am:
ISSCC 2013 is the 60th Conference in an incredibly long-lasting series. Following… Read More
Aldec Delivers Leading Verification Methodologies!
For those of you who don’t know, Aldec Inc., headquartered in Henderson, Nevada, is an industry leader in Electronic Design Verification and offers a patented technology suite including: RTL Design, RTL Simulators, Hardware-Assisted Verification, ASIC Prototyping, Design Rule Checking, IP Cores, DO-254 Functional Verification… Read More


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