Since the beginning of the semiconductor industry, improving the rate of yield learning has been a critical factor in the success silicon manufacturing. Each fab has dedicated yield teams that look at the yield of wafers manufactured the previous day and attempt to find the root cause of any unexpected “excursions.” In earlier… Read More
Mentor and NXP Demonstrate that IJTAG Can Reduce Test Setup Time for Complex SoCs
The creation of test patterns for mixed signal IP has been, to a large extent, a manual effort. To improve the process used to test, access, and control embedded IP, a new IEEE P1687 standard is being defined by a broad coalition of IP vendors, IP users, major ATE companies, and all three major EDA vendors. This new standard, also called… Read More
Test and Diagnosis at ISTFA
Finding and debugging failures on integrated circuits has become increasingly difficult. Two sessions at ISTFA (International Symposium for Testing and Failure Analysis) on Thursday address the current best practices and research directions of diagnosis.
The first was a tutorial this morning by Mentor Graphics luminary… Read More
Creating Plug-and-Play IP Networks in Large SoCs with IEEE P1687 (IJTAG)
Until now, the integration and testing of IP blocks used in large SOCs has been a manual, time consuming design effort. A new standard called IEEE P1687 (or “IJTAG”) for IP plug-and-play integration is emerging to simplify these tasks. EDA tools are also emerging to support the new standard. Last week mentor announcedTessent IJTAG,… Read More
IJTAG, Testing Large SoCs
Test is the Rodney Dangerfield of EDA, it doesn’t get any respect. All designs need to be tested but somehow synthesis, routing, analog layout and the rest are the sexy areas. In my spoof all purpose EDA keynote address I even dissed it:You are short on time so slip in a quick mention of manufacturing test. Who knows anything … Read More
A Most Significant Man
Most of us live perfectly good lives without distinction, fame, or note. Others rack up the honors, filling their walls and resumes with recognition of their brilliance. Like Dr. Janusz Rajski.
Rajski is the director of engineering for the test products at Mentor Graphics, an IEEE Fellow, and the inventor of embedded deterministic… Read More
Chip On Wafer On Substrate (CoWoS)
Our EDA industry loves three letter acronyms so credit the same industry for creating a five letter acronym CoWoS. Two weeks ago TSMC announced tape-out of their first CoWoS test chip integrating with JEDEC Wide I/O mobile DRAM interface, making me interested enough to read more about it. At the recent TSMC Open Innovation Platform… Read More
SoC emulation syncs up with SuperSpeed USB
They say what adds value is to take something difficult and make it look simple. USB looks so simple when it is done right, but designers know it can be one of the more tempermental features in an SoC, especially in the latest SuperSpeed incarnation.… Read More
Model Driven Development
Mentor has a webinar on Model Driven Development (MDD) for Systems Engineering, presented by Bill Chown. It is actually the first of 15 webinars. This first one is just over 30 minutes long and I assume the others will be too. The webinar focuses on embedded system development, which historically has largely been validated using… Read More
TSMC dilemma: Cadence, Mentor or Synopsys?
Looking at the Press Release (PR) flow, it was interesting to see how TSMC has solved a communication dilemma. At first, let’s precise that #1 Silicon foundry has to work with each of the big three EDA companies. As a foundry, you don’t want to lose any customer, and then you support every major design flow. Choosing another strategy… Read More

