We know about formal methods for cache coherence state machines. What sorts of tests are possible using dynamic coherence verification? Paul Cunningham (GM, Verification at Cadence), Raúl Camposano (Silicon Catalyst, entrepreneur, former Synopsys CTO) and I continue our series on research ideas. As always, feedback welcome.… Read More
Electronic Design Automation
Verific Sharpening the Saw
Verific is an unusual company. They are completely dominant in what they do – providing parsers for Verilog/SV, VHDL and UPF. Yet they have no ambition to expand beyond that goal. Instead, per Michiel Ligthart (President and COO), they continue to “sharpen the saw”. This is an expression I learned in sales training, habit #7 from… Read More
S2C’s FPGA Prototyping Solutions
Prototyping solutions have been in the news a lot lately. And FPGA-based prototyping approach is pretty widely used. On a panel session at DAC 2021, Amir Salek, Head of Silicon for Cloud and Infrastructure at Google had the following to say. Prototyping FPGA is a tremendous platform for testing and validation. We are doubling down… Read More
Agile SoC Design: How to Achieve a Practical Workflow
“The only sustainable advantage you can have over others is agility, that’s it.” (Jeff Bezos)
The best workflow is the one that has been working until it doesn’t. In their quest to tape-out the next design, SoC teams rely on their proven workflow to meet design constraints and project milestones. As often the case, design … Read More
Future of Semiconductor Design: 2022 Predictions and Trends
Predictions and trends create the forces that accelerate innovations and keep the industry moving forward. We are all used to hearing of important issues and challenges, usually in the context of solutions offered by various vendors. The SemiWiki forum plays its role in bringing awareness of all of the above to its audience. For… Read More
The Semiconductor Ecosystem Explained
The last year has seen a ton written about the semiconductor industry: chip shortages, the CHIPS Act, our dependence on Taiwan and TSMC, China, etc.
But despite all this talk about chips and semiconductors, few understand how the industry is structured. I’ve found the best way to understand something complicated is to diagram… Read More
Why It’s Critical to Design in Security Early to Protect Automotive Systems from Hackers
Remember when a pair of ethical hackers remotely took over a Jeep Cherokee as it was being driven on a highway near downtown St. Louis back in 2015? The back story is, those “hackers,” security researchers Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek, approached vehicle manufacturers several years before their high-profile feat, warning… Read More
WEBINARS: Board-Level EM Simulation Reduces Late Respin Drama
Advanced board designs are fertile ground for misbehavior in time and frequency domains. Relying on intuition, then waiting until near-final product for power integrity (PI) or EMI testing almost guarantees board respins are coming. Lumped-parameter simulations of on-board power delivery networks (PDNs) struggle with … Read More
Faster Time to RTL Simulation Using Incremental Build Flows
I’ve been following Neil Johnson on Twitter and LinkedIn for several years now, as he has written and shared so much about the IC design and verification process, both as a consultant and working at EDA vendors. His recent white paper for Siemens EDA caught my eye, so I took the time to read through the 10 page document to learn… Read More
Breker Attacks System Coherency Verification
The great thing about architectural solutions to increasing throughput is that they offer big improvements. Multiple CPUs on a chip with (partially) shared cache hierarchies are now commonplace in server processors for this reason. But that big gain comes with significant added complexity in verifying correct behavior. In… Read More


Quantum Computing Technologies and Challenges