Most IC engineers learn best by hands-on experience when another more experienced person can show us what to do. If you cannot find that experienced person, then the next best thing is a video from an expert. I was surprised to find out that video was so important today that the #2 most viewed web site on the Internet was www.youtube.com… Read More
Sketch Router and auto-assist PCB layout
Archaic tech metaphors abound, stuck in the psyche of users everywhere. We still “dial” numbers, long after the benefit of a short pull area code disappeared. (Humans could dial 1, 2, or 3 a lot faster on a rotary phone, and there were fewer dialpulses for central office switches to decode – thus big cities with more phone traffic like… Read More
Mentor Acquires BDA!
Mentor Graphics acquired Berkeley Design Automation this morning. The details of the deal were unannounced. This is a strong move by Mentor to challenge Cadence and Synopsys in the nanometer analog/mixed-signal market and nanometer memory characterization market, respectively. Mentor not only acquires the technology and… Read More
Mentor U2U Is On April 10th
If you are a Mentor user, U2U, the Mentor User group is coming up on April 10th. This is an all day event at the DoubleTree. The event is free. Registration starts at 8am and the agenda itself starts at 9am. There is a reception from 5-6pm in the evening.
There are three keynotes. At 9am: Wally Rhines, CEO of Mentor. The Big Squeeze. For … Read More
A Fill Solution for 20nm at TSMC
By Jeff Wilson, Mentor Graphics
We’ve talked about the new requirements for Fill in IC design for advanced nodes in previous blogs on this site. This time I’d like describe the fill solution that Mentor and TSMC have jointly developed to meet the requirements of fill for TSMC’s 20nm (N20) manufacturing process.
The traditional… Read More
Dr. Walden Rhines Vision on Semiconductor & India
Last month India Electronics & Semiconductor Association (IESA) held its Vision Summit at Bangalore in which luminaries from across the semiconductor and electronics industry presented their views about the future of this industry and India’s progress. Dr. Walden C. Rhines, Chairman and CEO of Mentor Graphicspresented… Read More
One SPIE session not to miss
The time is nigh for another meeting of the practitioners of the lithographic arts, dark and otherwise, at the SPIE Advanced Lithography symposium.
I love this conference for the engagement you see, both in the sessions and in the hallways. People actually meet and talk and argue. There’s always interesting gossip, exciting technologies,… Read More
Verification of Power Delivery Networks
Power delivery networks (PDN) are the metal structures on a chip that delivers the power. In a high-end desktop SoC this might be delivering as much as 150W, and with voltages around 1V that means over 150 amps of current. Clearly getting the PDN correct is critical for a correctly functioning chip. One of the challenges to verifying… Read More
Smart Strategies for Efficient Testing of 3D-ICs
3D-IC has a stack of dies connected and packaged together, and therefore needs new testing strategies other than testing a single die. It’s given that a single defective die can render the whole of 3D-IC unusable, so each die in the stack must be completely and perfectly tested before its entry into that stack. Looking at it from a … Read More
Verification Execution: When will we get it right?
Verification technologist Hemendra Talesaraattended a conference in Austin and asked me to post this article on verification execution for him as a blog. I first met Hemendra when he worked at XtremeEDA, and now he works at Synapse Design Automation – a design services company.
“In theory there is no difference between … Read More