In thinking about automotive electronics safety standards, such as ISO 26262, it is easy to jump to the conclusion that they are in reference to systems such as autonomous driving, which are entering the marketplace. In reality, functional safety in automotive electronics plays a significant role in many well-established automotive… Read More
Useful Skew in Production Flows
The concept of applying useful clock skew to the design of synchronous systems is not new. To date, the application of this design technique has been somewhat limited, as the related methodologies have been rather ad hoc, to be discussed shortly. More recently, the ability to leverage useful skew has seen a major improvement,… Read More
Top Three Reasons to Attend the Synopsys Fusion Compiler Event!
As a professional semiconductor event attendee I can pretty much tell if an event will be successful by looking at the agenda. What I look for is simple, customer presentations. Not company presentations or partner presentations but actual customer case studies presented by name brand companies. For this event Google, Intel,… Read More
Synopsys Fusion Compiler Delivers ARM Hercules-Samsung 5LPE Design
There were many interesting presentations at ARM TechCon this year besides the keynote addresses by Arm, which were truly stunning for content and production value. One very interesting presentation was the talk given in the afternoon of Wednesday, October 9, 2019, titled, Synopsys Fusion Compiler for Next Generation Arm Hercules… Read More
New ARC VPX DSP IP provides parallel processing punch
The transition to the digital age from a mostly analog world really began with the invention of the A-to-D and D-to-A converters. However scalar processors can easily be overwhelmed by the copious data produced by something as simple as an audio stream. To solve this problem and to really jumpstart the digital age, the development… Read More
Accelerating Functional Safety Verification
Verifying a design for functional safety requirements for an IP or SoC per ISO 26262 is a complex process that can’t be encapsulated in one tool. Process complexities depend on whether the Tier1 or OEM is targeting safety-levels ASIL-A , B, C or D, where ASIL-D applies to anything truly safety-critical such as airbag controls or … Read More
Formal in the Field: Users are Getting More Sophisticated
Building on an old chestnut, if sufficiently advanced technology looks like magic, there are a number of technology users who are increasingly looking like magicians. Of course when it comes to formal, neither is magical, just very clever. The technology continues to advance and so do the users in their application of those methods.… Read More
Functional Safety ARC Processor IP will speed automotive system design
In the automotive space you can’t even get out of the starting gate without Functional Safety (FS). All electronic system that go into cars must have ISO 26262 certification. However, this is not something you slap on after the fact. From the ground up the requirements for ISO 26262 must be considered and the proper processes must… Read More
Design Perspectives on Intermittent Faults
Bugs are an inescapable reality in any but the most trivial designs and usually trace back to very deterministic causes – a misunderstanding of the intended spec or an incompletely thought-through implementation of some feature, either way leading to reliably reproducible failure under the right circumstances. You run diagnostics,… Read More
Synopsys and Infineon prepare for expanding AI use in automotive applications
We all know that cars are using processors for many tasks, but it is easy to fail to comprehend just how many there are in a typical modern car. Browsing through the Infineon AURIX automotive processor application guide, you can start to see just how pervasive processors are. The AURIX processors are specifically designed for automotive… Read More