The old phrase that the cure is worse than the disease is apropos when discussing MBIST for large SOCs where running many MBIST tests in parallel can exceed power distribution network (PDN) capabilities. Memory Built-In Self-Test (MBIST) usually runs automatically during power on events. Due to the desire to speed up test and … Read More
Electronic Design Automation
How System Companies are Re-shaping the Requirements for EDA
As the oldest and largest EDA conference, the Design Automation Conference (DAC) brings the best minds together to present, discuss, showcase and debate the latest and greatest advances in EDA. It accomplishes this in the form of technical papers, talks, company booths, product pavilions and panel discussions.
A key aspect … Read More
The 5G Rollout Safety Controversy
There has been a lot of attention in the news recently about AT&T and Verizon rolling out their first implementations of sub-6GHz 5G radio access networks (RAN). Notably, the FAA and airline industries have voiced serious concerns about potential safety issues for aircraft autopilot and landing systems. As a result of these… Read More
2021 Retrospective. Innovation in Verification
As we established last year, we will use the January issue of this blog to look back at the papers we reviewed last year. We lost Jim Hogan and the benefit of his insight early last year, but we gained a new and also well-known expert in Raúl Camposano (another friend of Jim). Paul (GM, Verification at Cadence), Raúl (Silicon Catalyst,… Read More
From Now to 2025 – Changes in Store for Hardware-Assisted Verification
Lauro Rizzatti recently interviewed Jean-Marie Brunet, vice president of product management and product engineering in the Scalable Verification Solution division at Siemens EDA, about why hardware-assisted verification is a must have for today’s semiconductor designs. A condensed version of their discussion is below.… Read More
DAC 2021 – What’s Up with Agnisys and Spec-driven IC Development
Walking the exhibit floors at DAC in December I spotted the familiar face of Anupam Bakshi, Founder and CEO of Agnisys, so I stopped by the booth to get an update on his EDA company. My first question for him was about the origin of the company name, Agnisys, and I found at that Agni means Fire in Sanskrit, one of the five elements.
The … Read More
Can you Simulate me now? Ansys and Keysight Prototype in 5G
Ansys and Keysight wanted to see if they could answer the question, If we put virtual cellphones in different locations in a city, can we predict what kind of 5G signal we’re going to get in those locations? To find out, they created and tested a detailed virtual model of a city, including a variety of 5G antennae, receivers, and transmitters… Read More
Identity and Data Encryption for PCIe and CXL Security
Privacy and security have always been a concern when it comes to computing. In prior decades for most people this meant protecting passwords and locking your computer. However, today more and more users are storing sensitive data in the cloud, where it needs to be protected at rest and while in motion. In a Synopsys webinar Dana Neustadter,… Read More
Cliosoft and Microsoft to Collaborate on the RAMP Program
We have all heard of many advanced technological inventions and products from the defense sector that subsequently got commercialized. While most of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) projects are classified secrets, many military innovations have had great influence in the commercial sector in the fields… Read More
Webinar: AMS, RF and Digital Full Custom IC Designs need Circuit Sizing
My career started out by designing DRAM circuits at Intel, and we manually sized every transistor in the entire design to get the optimum performance, power and area. Yes, it was time consuming, required lots of SPICE iterations and was a bit error prone. Thank goodness times have changed, and circuit designers can work smarter … Read More


AI Bubble?