Electromigration (EM) is a reliability concern for IC designers because a failure in the field could spell disaster as in lost human life or even bankruptcy for a consumer electronics company. In the old days of IC design we would follow a sequential and iterative design process of:… Read More
Electronic Design Automation
Jasper Apps White Paper
Just in time for the Jasper User Group meeting, Jasper have a new white paper explaining the concept of JasperGold Apps.
First the User Group Meeting. It is in Cupertino at the Cypress Hotel November 12-13th. For more details and to register, go here. The meeting is free for qualified attendees (aka users). One thing I noticed at the… Read More
SpyGlass IP Kit 2.0
On Halloween, Atrenta and TSMC announced the availability of SpyGlass IP Kit 2.0. IP Kit is a fundamental element of TSMC’s soft IP9000 Quality Assessment program that assesses the robustness and completeness of soft (synthesizable) IP.
IP Kit 2.0 will be fully supported on TSMC-Online and available to all TSMC’s soft IP alliance… Read More
IBM Tapes Out 14nm ARM Processor on Cadence Flow
An announcement at the ARM conference was of a joint project to tape out an ARM Cortex-M0 in IBM’s 14nm FinFET process. In fact they taped out 3 different versions of the chip using different routing architectures to see the impact on yield.
This was the first 14nm ARM tapeout, it seems. I’m sure Intel has built plenty … Read More
Improving FPGA Prototype Debugging
FPGA Prototyping is growing in popularity as a method to get an SoC design into hardware running at clock speeds up to 100MHz or so. One downside during traditional FPGA prototyping debug is the limited number of internal signals that you can observe while trying to chase down bugs in the hardware design in the presence of running … Read More
Jasper Property Synthesis Apps
Jasper restructured JasperGold so that it could deliver its formal technology more flexibly by having a base system and a porfolio of apps. This would also make it easier to upgrade capabilities by creating new apps. Today, Jasper announced two new apps:
- JasperGold Structural Property Synthesis (SPS)
- JasperGold Behavioral
An AMS Reference Flow for Power Management Designs
At DAC in June I visited and blogged about 30+ EDA and Semi IP companies, however I didn’t have time to watch the TowerJazz presentation in the Cadence Theater entitled: AMS Flow for Power Management Designs. Today I watched the 26 minute video and have summarized what I learned in this blog post.… Read More
Simulation: Expert Insights into Modeling Microcontrollers @ Renesas DevCon
“Simulation: Expert Insights into Modeling Microcontrollers” was the recent panel hot topic at Renesas DevCon2012, featuring Paolo Giustoof GM, Mark Ramseyerof Renesas, Marc Serughettiof Synopsys, Jay Yantchevof ASTC / VWorks, and Simon Davidmannof Imperas.
… Read More
SoC emulation syncs up with SuperSpeed USB
They say what adds value is to take something difficult and make it look simple. USB looks so simple when it is done right, but designers know it can be one of the more tempermental features in an SoC, especially in the latest SuperSpeed incarnation.… Read More
Brian Bailey Interviews Kathryn Kranen
Brian Bailey at EETimes has an interesting interview with Kathryn Kranen. He says that the interview will be published in installments but the first one is up here. This first installment is mostly about how long-lived EDA companies (and others) have become since it takes a long time to build up enough revenue to be able to IPO.
She… Read More


PDF Solutions Charts a Course for the Future at Its User Conference and Analyst Day