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Academia and TCAD Grow Closer

Academia and TCAD Grow Closer
by Daniel Payne on 12-02-2015 at 12:00 pm

On my first trip to Austria for EDA business I traveled by car from Germany, and I couldn’t wait to see how fast we would travel on the fabled Autobahn. Oddly enough it was summertime and the Autobahn was filled with vacationing families driving cars with shiny, aluminum campers in tow, so our car only traveled about 60 mph, nothing… Read More


Learning about 3D Integration of ICs and Systems

Learning about 3D Integration of ICs and Systems
by Daniel Payne on 10-15-2015 at 4:00 pm

We blog a lot about Moore’s Law, and even “More than Moore” where 3D integration of ICs and systems are used to get lower product costs. One big challenge with 3D integration of ICs is that most EDA software was really intended only for abstracting at 2D or 2.5D structures. Over the past several years there have … Read More


Thermal Reliability and Power Integrity for IC Design

Thermal Reliability and Power Integrity for IC Design
by Daniel Payne on 09-14-2015 at 12:00 pm

When I designed DRAM chips at Intel back in the 1970’s we didn’t really know what the die temperature would be before taping out silicon, instead we waited for packaged parts to come back and then did our thermal measurements. IC designers today don’t have that luxury of taping out their new SoC without having … Read More


SEMATECH, Silvaco and SRAM

SEMATECH, Silvaco and SRAM
by Paul McLellan on 09-04-2015 at 7:00 am

SEMATECH has been around for over 20 years, starting in Austin. Today it is in upstate New York which increasingly seems to be the area for semiconductor research with IBM (still doing research although they sold their semiconductor business to GlobalFoundries), GlobalFoundries’ own Fab 8, the College of Nanoscale Science… Read More


Silvaco 30 Years Ago

Silvaco 30 Years Ago
by Paul McLellan on 07-31-2015 at 7:00 am

It’s Silvaco’s 30 year anniversary. You may already know the dry official story of the early days:

  • Founded in 1984 by Dr Ivan Pesic
  • In 1984 the initial product, Utmost, quickly became the industry standard for parameter extraction, device characterization and modeling.
  • In 1985 Silvaco entered the SPICE circuit
Read More

The Transistor is the Foundation of TCAD to Signoff

The Transistor is the Foundation of TCAD to Signoff
by Paul McLellan on 06-04-2015 at 7:00 am

At the most basic level, semiconductor design is all about transistors. Any report on a large microprocessor or mobile application processor is in awe about how many transistors it contains. Moore’s Law is all about the most economic way to manufacture transistors. Each process generation for the last decade and looking ahead… Read More


High-Voltage Power Design

High-Voltage Power Design
by Paul McLellan on 05-20-2015 at 7:00 am

Most of what is talked about on SemiWiki is silicon design. After all for regular SoCs it is the only game in town. But for high voltage power applications (think automotive for one big market) there are other more esoteric technologies becoming more attractive.

Silicon has been the material of choice for high-voltage power applications… Read More


Silvaco: TCAD to Signoff in Vertical Markets

Silvaco: TCAD to Signoff in Vertical Markets
by Paul McLellan on 04-18-2015 at 8:00 pm

Recently, I talked about meeting with Dave Dutton the CEO of Silvaco. Mainly we were talking about the recent acquisition of Invarian but he also brought me up to date on Silvaco and how he is bringing their disparate product lines into a more focused strategy.

See also Silvaco Swallows Invarian

Silvaco would be the first to admit … Read More


Silvaco Swallows Invarian

Silvaco Swallows Invarian
by Paul McLellan on 03-20-2015 at 7:00 am

Yesterday, Silvaco announced that it has acquired Invarian Inc. Details of the transaction were not disclosed.

Who is Invarian? They are a recognized leader in block-level to full-chip sign-off analysis for complex, high-performance ICs. Their unique methodology utilizes a parallel architecture and concurrent power-voltage-thermal… Read More


Webinar: Electronics in Space or Avionics

Webinar: Electronics in Space or Avionics
by Paul McLellan on 02-03-2015 at 3:00 pm

I talked to Derek Kimpton of Silvaco today. He turns out to be a fellow Brit. He is presenting a webinar on total dose that is of interest to anyone creating chips that will go into space (primarily satellites), or near space (primarily avionics in planes). Pretty much everyone knows at least the basics of single-event-effects (SEE)… Read More