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
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
Back to Basics in RTL Design Quality
Harry Foster waxes philosophical in a recent white paper from Siemens EDA, in this case on the origins of bugs and the best way to avoid them. Spoiler alert, the answer is not to make them in the first place or at least to flush them out very quickly. I’m not being cynical – that really is the answer though practice often falls short of ideal.… Read More
APR Tool Gets a Speed Boost and Uses Less RAM
Automatic Place and Route (APR) tools have been around since the 1980s for IC design teams to use, and before that routing was done manually by very patient layout designers. Initially the big IDMs had their own internal CAD groups coding APR tools in house, but eventually the commercial EDA market picked up this automation area,… Read More
DARPA Toolbox Initiative Boosts Design Productivity
When you think of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), this first thing that comes to mind is the development of the internet. And indeed, if you look at their website’s historic timeline, the development of ARPANET, as it was known at the time, is shown prominently in 1969. Incidentally, I actually used one of … Read More
Heterogeneous Package Design Challenges for ADAS
Increasingly complex heterogeneous packaging solutions have proved essential to meeting the rapidly scaling requirements for automotive electronics. Perhaps there is no better example of this than advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) that are found in most new cars. In a recent paper published by Siemens EDA, they … Read More
Electromigration and IR Drop Analysis has a New Entrant
My first IR drop analysis was back in the early 1980s at Intel, where I had to manually model the parasitics of the VDD and VSS interconnect for all of the IO cells that our team was designing in a graphics chip, then I ran that netlist in a SPICE simulator using transient analysis, measuring the bounce in VSS and droop in VDD levels as all… Read More
Formal Methods for Aircraft Standards Compliance
When promoting adoption of formal methods in functional verification, there are two hurdles to overcome: one technical, the other people. The first is a comfortable and familiar challenge for us engineers. Take the course, pass the test, get the certificate. Very mechanical and deterministic. People on the other hand are non-deterministic… Read More
Verifications Horizons 2021, Now More Siemens
In a discussion with Tom Fitzpatrick of Siemens EDA he recalled that their Verification Horizons newsletter started 17 years ago, back when they were Mentor. We’ve known about the Siemens acquisition for a while. The deal closed in March 2017, but it wasn’t until January 1, 2021 that the legal entity merger was complete. Which makes… Read More