This is the 15[SUP]th[/SUP] anniversary for the SAME Conference, dedicated to innovation on Microelectronics. Sophia-Antipolis is not only close to Mediterranean sea, but also at the heart of Telecom valley in south of France, with Texas Instruments design center dedicated to Application Processor design (OMAP), Cadence… Read More
Hogan University: Second Semester
The next event in the Jim Hogan Emerging Companies series (organized by the EDAC Emerging Companies Committee) will be on 17th October at Cadence (I’m guessing in building 5 but I’m sure there will be signs). The specific topic this time will be How to Raise Money and How Not to Spend it. The evening will focus on different… Read More
17th Si2 Conference – October 9 – Santa Clara, CA
This conference will begin with a keynote address by my good friend Jim Hogan, EDA industry pioneer and venture capitalist. Jim has worked in the semiconductor design and manufacturing industry for more than 35 years and is very candid about his experience and vision for the future of EDA. This keynote and Q&A alone is worth … Read More
DAC 2012 Cheerleader Controversy!
First, I must say that I’m biased. I like Cheerleaders, they are lots of fun, I even married one. Second, I’m not a fan of Peggy Aycinena. She has been on her EDA feminist rant for years now and I have been targeted multiple times. My solution has been to ignore her and any publication that supports her but this time she has gone too far.… Read More
Robustness, Reliability and Yield at DAC
On Wednesday at DAC I met with Bob Slee, distributor and Michael Siu, AE for MunEDA to get an update on what’s new. MunEDA has EDA software for:
- Schematic porting
- Nominal circuit analysis
- Nominal circuit optimization
- Statistical circuit analysis
- Statistical circuit optimization
- IP porting
- Circuit model generation
Photo and Video Overview of DAC 2012
Sunday Night – you have to network at the EDAC kick-off party.… Read More
FinFET Standard Cells at DAC
Rajiv Bhateja, Dhrumil Gandhi and Neal Carney met with me at DAC on Wednesday to give an update on what’s new in 2012 for Tela Innovations, a provider of lithography optimized IP and tools. This team has a rich history in EDA and IP from companies like: ARM, Artisan, Mentor Graphics and Silicon Compilers.… Read More
Finding RTL Bugs Live Using Formal Techniques
Most of what you see at DAC is canned PowerPoint presentations, however on Tuesday afternoon I spotted a company called Oski Technology that was doing something almost unheard of – they had an engineer debugging a digital design from Nvidia using formal tools live. I later found out the engineer found 4 bugs in just three days… Read More
Electromagnetic Simulation Update from Nimbic
Dr. Raul Camposano, CEO of Nimbic talked with me on Wednesday at DAC to provide an update on what’s new with their electromagnetic simulation tools.… Read More
IC Cell Library Characterization at DAC
Edmond Macaluso, President of Z-Circuit Automation met with me at DAC on Tuesday afternoon to provide an overview of how their EDA tools characterize cell libraries. … Read More


ASML Has High-NA and Chipmakers Can’t Say No