I spoke with Steve Pateras of Synopsys last week to better understand what was happening with their Silicon Lifecycle Management vision, and I was reminded of a Forbes article from last year: Never Heard of Silicon Lifecycle Management? Join the Club. At least two major EDA vendors are now using the relatively new acronym SLM, and… Read More
Electronic Design Automation
Register Management is the Foundation of Every Chip
Virtually every chip today runs software. And that software needs to interact with and control the hardware on the chip. There are typically many interfaces to manage as well as dedicated hardware accelerators to coordinate. In fact, many of those hardware accelerators are present only to support the execution of the software… Read More
Siemens EDA Automotive Insights, for Analysts
There is a classical approach to EDA marketing, and semiconductor marketing at times, which aims exclusively at technical customers and the businesspeople immediately around those experts. The style is understandable and necessary. Those folks are the direct influencers and buyers of the products we are promoting, so we must… Read More
Tessent Streaming Scan Network Brings Hierarchical Scan Test into the Modern Age
Remember when you had to use dial up internet or parallel printer cables connected directly to the printer to print something? Well even if you don’t remember these things, you know that now there is a better way. Regrettably, the prevalent methods used for hierarchical Design for Test (DFT) still look at lot like this – SoC level … Read More
Battery Sipping HiFi DSP Offers Always-On Sensor Fusion
Earbuds are one of the fastest growing market segments, which is creating the need for audio DSPs with higher performance and a smaller energy footprint. More than just being wireless speakers – earbuds, and wearables for that matter, have become a sophisticated extension of the user interface of phones and laptops, etc.… Read More
Minimizing MCU Supply Chain Grief
I doubt there is anyone who hasn’t felt the impact of supply chain problems, from late ecommerce deliveries (weeks) to kitchen appliances (up to 6 months or more). Perhaps no industry has been more affected than auto makers, whose cars are now critically dependent on advanced electronics. According to a white paper recently released… Read More
Webinar: Boosting Analog IC Layout Productivity
Digital IC designers use a well-known methodology with pre-designed standard cells and other IP blocks playing a major re-use role, however in the analog IC design world there are more nuanced requirements which often dictate that a new analog block be highly customized. The downside is that customizing analog IC layout takes… Read More
CDC for MBIST: Who Knew?
Now and again, I enjoy circling back to a topic on which I spent a good deal of time back in my Atrenta days – clock domain crossing analysis (CDC). This is an area that still has opportunity to surprise me at least, in this case looking at CDC analysis around MBIST logic. CDC for MBIST might seem strange. Isn’t everything in test mode synchronous… Read More
S2C EDA Delivers on Plan to Scale-Up FPGA Prototyping Platforms to Billions of Gates
S2C has been a global leader in FPGA prototyping for nearly two decades now, and its FPGA prototyping platforms have closely tracked the availability of the latest FPGAs – including the latest FPGAs from both Xilinx and Intel. And they are definitely delivering on the promise to advance their prototyping solutions for hyperscale… Read More
Cliosoft Webinar: What’s Needed for Next Generation IP-Based Digital Design
There’s plenty of talk about requirements for IP data management. The fundamental methods to prevent chaos, waste or worse are popular topics. I’ve covered webinars from Cliosoft on the topic on SemiWiki. But what about the future? What’s really needed to set up a path that scales, addressing the challenges of today and the new … Read More
TSMC N3 Process Technology Wiki