The capacity and energy efficiency challenges from the growing appetite for high-speed data along with advanced applications such as LIDAR and quantum computing are driving demand for increasingly large-scale photonic integrated circuits (PIC). With an ever-increasing number of components on a single photonic chip, manual… Read More
Electronic Design Automation
Coding Guidelines for Datapath Verification
It has been an article of faith that you can’t use formal tools to validate datapath logic (math components). Formal is for control logic, not datapath, we now realize. We understood the reason – wide inputs (32-bit, 64-bit or more) fed through a multiplier deliver eye-watering state space sizes. State space explosions also happen… Read More
Using EM/IR Analysis for Efinix FPGAs
I’ve been following the EM/IR (Electro-Migration, IR is current and resistance) analysis market for many years now, and recently attended a presentation from Steven Chin, Sr. Director IC Engineering of Efinix, at the User2User event organized by Siemens EDA. The Tuesday presentation was in the morning at the Marriott… Read More
Methods for Current Density and Point-to-point Resistance Calculations
IC reliability is an issue that circuit design engineers and reliability engineers are concerned about, because physical effects like high Current Density (CD) in interconnect layers, or high point-to-point (P2P) resistance on device interconnect can impact reliability, timing or Electrostatic Discharge (ESD) robustness.… Read More
Very Short Reach (VSR) Connectivity for Optical Modules
Bandwidth, latency, power and reach are always the key points of focus when it comes to connectivity. As the demand for more data and higher bandwidth connectivity continue, power management is gaining a lot of attention. There is renewed interest in pursuing silicon photonics to address many of these challenges. There are many… Read More
Refined Fault Localization through Learning. Innovation in Verification
This is another look at refining the accuracy of fault localization. Once a bug has been detected, such techniques aim to pin down the most likely code locations for a root cause. Paul Cunningham (GM, Verification at Cadence), Raúl Camposano (Silicon Catalyst, entrepreneur, former Synopsys CTO and now Silvaco CTO) and I continue… Read More
3D IC Update from User2User
Our smart phones, tablets, laptops and desktops are the most common consumer products with advanced 2.5D and 3D IC packaging techniques. I love seeing the product tear down articles to learn how advanced packaging techniques are being used, so at the User2User conference in Santa Clara I attended a presentation from Tarek Ramadan,… Read More
Unlocking PA design with predictive DPD
Next up in this series on modulated signals is an example of multi-dimensional EM design challenges: RF power amplifiers (PAs). Digital pre-distortion (DPD) is a favorite technique for linearizing PA performance. Static effects are easy to model and correct, but PAs are notorious for interrelated dynamic effects spoiling … Read More
Protecting High-Speed Interfaces in Data Centers with Security IP
The never ending appetite for higher bandwidths, faster data interfaces and lower latencies are bringing about changes in how data is processed at data centers. The expansion of cloud to the network edge has introduced broad use of artificial intelligence (AI) techniques for extracting meaning from data. Cloud supercomputing… Read More
Take a Leap of Certainty at DAC 2022
The live events I have attended thus far this year have been very good. As much as I liked the virtual events, attending in the comfort of my home or sailboat, it is great to be live and networking inside the semiconductor ecosystem, absolutely.
Ansys has been a great supporter of the Design Automation Conference but this year they … Read More


AI Bubble?