Despite sounding like a minor enhancement version for USB, USB 3.2 introduces many important changes for the USB specification. To see where USB has come from and where it is going, it is essential to look at what is found in USB 3.2. The other salient point is that now the Type-C connector has split out from the underlying USB specification… Read More
Key Requirements for Effective SoC Verification Management
Effective and efficient functional verification is one of the biggest hurdles for today’s large and complex system-on-chip (SoC) designs. The goal is to verify as close as possible to 100% of the design’s specified functionality before committing to the long and expensive tape-out process for application-specific integrated… Read More
Synopsys is Enabling the Cloud Computing Revolution
In 2019 I was involved in a major project to move all our engineering and financial systems to the cloud. We succeeded in this endeavor, but it wasn’t easy. We faced a lot of infrastructure challenges during our journey. The freedom from facility management and capital budgeting offered by the cloud was significant, however. If … Read More
Techniques and Tools for Accelerating Low Power Design Simulations
I recently watched a webinar titled “How to accelerate power-aware simulation debug with Synopsys’ VC LP” that was presented by Ashwani Kumar Dwivedi senior applications engineer at Synopsys. Watching the webinar made me reminisce how design verification has evolved over the years. A long time ago, static verification started… Read More
Synopsys Delivers a Brief History of AI chips and Specialty AI IP
Let’s face it, AI is everywhere. From the cloud to the edge to your pocket, there is more and more embedded intelligence fueling efficiency and features. It’s sometimes hard to discern where human interaction ends, and machine interaction begins. The technology that underlies all this is quite complex and daunting to understand.… Read More
A New ML Application, in Formal Regressions
Machine learning (ML) is a once-in-a-generation innovation that seems like it should be applicable almost everywhere. It’s certainly revolutionized automotive safety, radiology and many other domains. In our neck of the woods, SoC implementation is advancing through learning to reduce total negative slacks and better optimize… Read More
Change Management for Functional Safety
By now we’re pretty familiar with the requirements ISO 26262 places on development for automotive safety. The process, procedures and metrics you will apply to meet various automotive safety integrity levels (ASIL). You need to train organizations. In fact you should establish a safety culture across the whole company or line… Read More
What Might the “1nm Node” Look Like?
The device roadmap for the next few advanced process nodes seems relatively clear. The FinFET topology will subsequently be displaced by a “gate-all-around” device, typically using multiple stacked channels with a metal gate completely surrounding the “nanosheets”. Whereas the fin demonstrates improved gate-to-channel… Read More
The Heart of Trust in the Cloud. Hardware Security IP
You might think that cloud services run on never-ending racks of servers and switches in giant datacenters. But what they really run on is trust. Trust that your data (or your client’s data) is absolutely tamper-proof inside that datacenter. Significantly more secure than it would be if you tried to manage the same operations in… Read More
Synopsys is Extending CXL Applications with New IP
Compute Express Link (CXL), a new open interconnect standard, targets intensive workloads for CPUs and purpose-built accelerators where efficient, coherent memory access between a host and device is required. A consortium to enable this new standard is in place, and a lot of heavy hitters are behind the standard, including … Read More