When technology advances, complexities increase and data size becomes unmanageable. Fresh thinking and a new environment for automation are needed to provide the required increase in productivity. Specifically in case of circuit simulation of advanced-node analog designs, where precision is paramount and a large number… Read More
HSPICE – 35 and looking good!
A maturetool. A legacytool. A tool that’s a little long in the tooth. We have all used these terms to refer to an EDA product that has not been able to keep up with technical challenges of model complexity, performance, or new features required by current SoC and system design requirements.… Read More
Domain Crossing Verification Needs Continue to Grow
Clock domain crossing (CDC) analysis has been around for many years, initially as special checks in verification or static timing analysis, but it fairly quickly diverged into specialized tools focused just on this problem. CDC checks are important because (a) you can lose data or even lock up at, or downstream of a poorly-handled… Read More
True Random Number Generation
Random numbers are central to modern security systems. The humble password, perhaps the least profound application, is encrypted and verified against using SHA or MD algorithms with a random number salt. You probably remember a college class on how to generate pseudo-random numbers algorithmically, some very sophisticated.… Read More
Does IoT need Sensor Fusion? Yes, but at low-power, low cost…and higher performance
We said this in the past, but let’s reiterate that IoT devices will be successful if they can meet low-cost and low-power requirements. Low-cost is the condition for IoT devices market penetration, I mean such a market adoption that we count several IoT systems (and dozens of devices) in every house. That’s the only way to reach the… Read More
Synopsys on the Future of Custom Layout!
Analog and mixed signal design has received more than their fair share of attention since the mobile revolution and now that FinFETs are in production at the foundries I see that trend continuing. As a result this year there are some interesting things brewing in EDA, especially in the area of Custom Layout.
Innovation in Custom … Read More
Maybe not the world, but schedules got eaten
It has been almost five years since Marc Andreessen wrote the words, “Software is eating the world.” The premise of his essay in the Wall Street Journal in 2011 was pretty simple: the technology world has seen its intrinsic value shift from hardware to software. New all-software names have appeared on the list of high flying companies,… Read More
How Not To Be Incoherent
The advantage of working with cache memory is the great boost in performance you can get from working with a local high-speed copy of chunks of data from main memory. The downside is that you are messing with a copy; if another processor happens to be working in a similar area, there is a danger you can get out of sync when reading and writing… Read More
HDCP 2.2, Root of Trust, Industry’s First SHA-3 Security IP from Synopsys
Did you know that by 2020 90% of cars will be connected to Internet? Great, but today, there are already more than 100 car models affected with security flaws (Source: theguardian.com, 2015). That 320 apps are installed on average smartphone device? It would be a complete success, but 43% of Android devices allow installation of… Read More
3 flavors of TMR for FPGA protection
Back in the microprocessor stone age, government procurement agencies fell in love with the idea of radiation hardened parts that might survive catastrophic events. In those days, before rad-hard versions of PowerPC and SPARC arrived, there were few choices for processors in defense and space programs.
One of the first rad-hard… Read More

