At DAC 2011 in San Diego, Apache gave many product presentations. Of course not everyone could make DAC or could make all the presentations in which they were interested. So from mid-July until mid-August these presentations will be given as webinars. Details, and links for registration, are here on the Apache website.
The seminars… Read More
Electronic Design Automation
Apache Design Automation acquired by Ansys
We all knew that Apache had filed for an IPO earlier and were just waiting for the timing and price to be revealed. Rumors have been circulating about an acquisition and today we know that the rumors were true asAnsys paid $310 million in cash for Apache.
Ansys stock has surged some 35% over the past twelve months:
Products
This acquisition… Read More
SOC Realization
There are some very interesting comments to the last entry on SoC Realization and how more and more chips are actually assembled out of IP. There was clearly a lot of discussion in this area at DAC, although most people (Atrenta being an exception) don’t use the term SoC Realization, presumably because it was originated by … Read More
ARM and Mentor Team Up on Test
Introduction
Before DAC I met with Stephen Pateras, Ph.D. at Mentor Graphics, he is the Product Marketing Director in the Silicon Test Solutions group. Stephen has been at Mentor for two years and was part of the LogicVision acquisition. He was in early at LogicVision and went through their IPO, before that he was at IBM in the mainframe… Read More
Smartphones in the BRICs
The latest edition of GSA Forum has an article by Aveek Sarkar of Apache on system design for emerging market needs. The BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) type countries are characterized by a small rich segment, a large and growing middle class and a large poor segment. One big trend is that smart phone use is expanding very fast.… Read More
OpenAccess
Probably everyone knows that openAccess is a layout database. It was originally developed at Cadence (called Genesis) but has since been transferred to Si2. Strictly speaking, openAccess is actually an API and the database is a reference implementation. The code is licensed under a sort of halfway to open-source: you can use … Read More
Can Your Router Handle 28 nm?
With the adoption of the 32/28 nm process node, some significant new challenges in digital routing arise—including complex design rule checking (DRC) and design for manufacturing (DFM) rules, increasing rule counts, very large (1 billion transistor) designs. To meet quality, time-to-market, and cost targets, design teams… Read More
Circuit Simulation and IC Layout update from Mentor at DAC
Intro
On Monday evening I talked with Linda Fosler, Director of marketing for the DSM Division at Mentor about what’s new at DAC this year in circuit simulation and IC layout tools.
Notes
IC Station – old name for IC layout tools
Eldo – Eldo Classic- Cell characterization
– ST is the early customer and teaching customer,… Read More
An Affordable 3D Field Solver at DAC
Intro
Massimo Sivilotti, Ph.D of Tanner EDA showed me their 3D field solver in the HiPer PX extraction tool at DAC last week.
Notes
Tool Suites – schematics, layout, SPICE simulation, DRC/LVS
– HiPer PX: 3D Field solvero Layers, dielectrics,
o Finite element analysis
o Boundary element methods
o 2D mode for pattern matching… Read More
Hardware Configuration Management at DAC
Intro
Show me what has changed in my RTL or Schematic since the last time I looked. This task is now automated by Cliosoft with their new hierarchical tool called Visual Design Difference (VDD). Srinath showed me what was new for DAC.
Srinath Anantharaman
Notes
LSI, STMicro – use DesignSync for their DM but use VDD for seeing visual… Read More
Relaxation-Aware Programming in ReRAM: Evaluating and Optimizing Write Termination