HSPICE users gathered in January 2012 at the HSPICE SIG(Special Interest Group) to talk about their experiences using this circuit simulator for a variety of IC and signal integrity issues. I wasn’t able to attend in person however I did watch the video and wanted to summarize what I heard:… Read More
Synopsys at DVCon: tutorial, lunch, keynote, exhibits and more
DVCon is next week, which I’m sure you know already if you are in verification. Of course Synopsys has a rich product portfolio in verification and verification IP (VIP) so is pretty visible at the show.
On Wednesday they are sponsoring lunch. Several Synopsys customers will talk about their view of how the verification landscape… Read More
Custom Processors: Webinar
What is a custom processor? Or Application Specific Instruction-set Processor (ASIP) which is the buzzword which may or may not catch on.
Most programming is done on a processor with a fixed instruction set: think Intel x86 or ARM. Intel or ARM decided on what instructions to include, based on a lot of benchmarking across a wide range… Read More
Multicore SoC Architecture Optimization
Once again with Synopsys and Arteris, the innovation is coming to solve an issue, faced by their potential customers: “In our research, we’ve found that almost half of project delays are caused by problems with the system architecture design and specification,” said Chris Rommel, vice president, embedded… Read More
Yes, there is such a thing as a free…model
I have been saying for years, ever since I started working at VaST, the biggest barrier to adoption of virtual platform technology for what I like to call virtualized software development is the availability of models. If models do not already exist when they are needed there are two issues: it takes money to develop them but, probably… Read More
How Is Your IC Design Flow Glued Together?
Most IC designers I talk to really enjoy the creative process of developing a new SoC design, debugging it, then watching it go into production. They don’t really like spending time learning how to make their EDA tools work together in an optimal IC design flow where they may have a dozen tools each with dozens of options. Fortunately… Read More
Synopsys, the first 25 years
Synopsys was started in 1986 and so 2011 was its 25th anniversary. They created a little timeline with some of their history. As with most companies, the earlier history is the most interesting, before it was clear what the future would bring. From 1986 to 1990 they grew to $22M in revenue, which was explosive growth. So explosive … Read More
Synopsys Eats Magma: What Really Happened with Winners and Losers!
Conspiracy theories abound! The inside story of the Synopsys (SNPS) acquisition of Magma (LAVA) brings us back to the 1990’s tech boom with shady investment bankers and pump/dump schemes. After scanning my memory banks and digging around Silicon Valley for skeletons with a backhoe here is what I found out:
The Commission… Read More
HSPICE – I Didn’t Know That About IC Circuit Simulation
HSPICE is over 30 years old, which is a testimony of how solid the circuit simulator has been and how widely used it is. To stay competitive the HSPICE developers have to innovate or the product will slowly loose ground to the many other simulator choices. I listened to the webinar last week to find out what was new with HSPICE.
Interoperability Forum
Earlier this week I went to the Synopsys Interoperability Forum. The big news of the day turned out to be Synopsys wanting to be more than interoperable with Magma, but that only got announced after we’d all gone away.
Philippe Margashack of ST opened, reviewing his slides from a presentation at the same forum from 10 years … Read More