SILVACO 051525 Webinar 800x100 v2
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Apache at DAC

Apache at DAC
by Paul McLellan on 05-04-2011 at 2:38 pm

DAC is less than a month away, June 6-8th for the tradeshow, longer depending on what other events you might also be attending. Apache is in booth 2448 (marked in red on the DAC floorplan map.

Many of the presentations at the Apache booth will be customers (such as ARM, Xilinx, ST Ericsson, GlobalFoundries and TSMC) discussing various… Read More


Two New Platforms for Systems Designers

Two New Platforms for Systems Designers
by Daniel Payne on 05-03-2011 at 7:03 pm

Introduction
Today Cadence announced at the Embedded Systems Conference something of interest to systems designers.

What’s New?
The Rapid Prototyping Platform and Virtual System Platform are what’s new, and they intend to enable and automate concurrent hardware and software development. I can remember Mentor… Read More


Graphical DRC vs Text-based DRC

Graphical DRC vs Text-based DRC
by Daniel Payne on 05-01-2011 at 11:42 am

Introduction
IC designs go through a layout process and then a verification of that layout to determine if the layout layer width and spacing rules conform to a set of manufacturing design rules. Adhering to the layout rules will ensure that your chip has acceptable yields.

At the 28nm node a typical DRC (Design Rule Check) deck will… Read More


Mentor 2 : Carl Icahn 0

Mentor 2 : Carl Icahn 0
by Daniel Nenni on 05-01-2011 at 9:46 am

The corporate raiders are still throwing rocks at Mentor Graphics. I have followed this reality show VERY closely and find their latest assault seriously counterproductive. Disinformation is common in EDA but I expected more from Carl Icahn and the Raiderettes. They are quite the drama queens. Here is a billion dollar question:… Read More


Ivo Bolsens of Xilinx and Crossover Designs

Ivo Bolsens of Xilinx and Crossover Designs
by Paul McLellan on 04-27-2011 at 4:14 pm

I was at Mentor’s u2u (user group) meeting and one of the keynotes was by Ivo Bolsens of Xilinx. The other was by Wally Rhines and is summarized here.

Ivo started off talking analogizing SoCs as the sports-cars of the industry (fast but expensive), and FPGAs as the station wagons (not cool). In fact he even said that when Xilinx… Read More


Wally’s u2u keynote

Wally’s u2u keynote
by Paul McLellan on 04-27-2011 at 3:25 pm

I was at Wally’s u2u (Mentor user group) keynote yesterday. The other keynote was by Ivo Bolsens of Xilinx and is here. He started off by looking at how the semiconductor industry has recovered and silicon area shipments are now back on trend after a pronounced drop in 2009 and revenue has followed. Finally the semiconductor… Read More


Semiconductor RTL Power Analysis: the sweet spot

Semiconductor RTL Power Analysis: the sweet spot
by Paul McLellan on 04-26-2011 at 4:20 pm

Power has become the strongest driver of semiconductor design today, more important than area, more important than timing. Whether the device is handheld, like a wireless phone, or tethered, like a router, complex power and energy requirements must be met. Shrinking geometries continue to impose new challenges as power management… Read More


How Avnera uses Hardware Configuration Management with Virtuoso IC Tools

How Avnera uses Hardware Configuration Management with Virtuoso IC Tools
by Daniel Payne on 04-21-2011 at 12:12 pm

Introduction
Here in the Silicon Forest (Oregon) we have a venture-backed, fabless analog semi company called Avnera that has designed over 10 Analog System on Chips (ASoC). Their chips are used in consumer products for both wireless audio and video applications.

 

James Rollins is the director of physical design at Avnera… Read More


Transistor-Level Electrical Rule Checking

Transistor-Level Electrical Rule Checking
by Daniel Payne on 04-20-2011 at 11:19 am

Introduction
Circuit designers work at the transistor level and strive to get the ultimate in performance, layout density or low power by creating crafty circuit topologies in both schematics and layout. Along with this quest comes the daunting task of verifying that all of your rules and best practices about reliability have… Read More


Semiconductor Virtual Platform Models

Semiconductor Virtual Platform Models
by Paul McLellan on 04-19-2011 at 3:38 pm

Virtual platforms have been an area that has some powerful value propositions for both architectural analysis and for software development. But the fundamental weakness has been the modeling problem. People want fast and accurate models but this turns out to be a choice.

The first issue is that there is an unavoidable tradeoff… Read More