There was a time when design goals were decided in the beginning, targeted on a particular technology node, design planning done for the same, and implementation done through point tools connected indesign flows customized according to the design. It’s no longer the case for modern SoC designs; there are multiple technology … Read More
Automotive MCU code fault-busting with vHIL
With electronic and software content in vehicles skyrocketing, and the expectations for flawless operation getting larger, the need for system-level verification continues to grow. Last month, we looked at a Synopsys methodology for virtual hardware in the loop, or vHIL… Read More
IoT need Low-cost, Low-power…and Silicon Proven IP
Today, IoT devices are available in our daily life through wearable, smart appliances or metering application and some prediction call for 33 billion connected objects, 25 billion being IoT by 2020 (Gartner, 2014). Being very synthetic, IoT device (smart appliance or wearable object) will be wirelessly and securely connected… Read More
We’re Number Two, We Try Harder
One of the big surprises I got at Synopsys’ ARC conference is that ARC is #2 in terms of share of licensed microprocessor shipments. I think most readers of Semiwiki would know ARM is #1 but would guess that MIPS (now owned by Imagination Technologies) is #2. But you’d be wrong, ARC is over twice as big.
Last week Synopsys… Read More
FPGA Prototyping: From Homebrew to Integrated Solutions
Years ago, when FPGA prototyping started, there were no solutions that you could go out and buy and everything was created as a one-off: buy some FPGAs or an FPGA-based board, and put it all together. It was a lot of effort, nobody really knew in advance how long it would take, there was very limited visibility for debug and the whole … Read More
Michael Sanie Plays the Synopsys Verification Variations
I met Michael Sanie last week. He is in charge of verification marketing at Synopsys. I know him well since he worked for me at both VLSI Technology and Cadence. In fact his first job out of college was to take over support of VLSIextract (our circuit extractor), which I had written. But we are getting ahead.
Michael was born in Iran and… Read More
Simulating to a fault in automotive and more
We’re putting the finishing touches on Chapter 9 of our upcoming book on ARM processors in mobile, this chapter looking at the evolution of Qualcomm. One of the things that made Qualcomm go was their innovative use of digital simulation. First, simulation proved out the Viterbi decoder (which Viterbi wasn’t convinced had a lot … Read More
Synopsys Q3 Results
Synopsys announced their quarterly results this afternoon. It is the end of their Q3 (yes, they are not on the regular calendar year. Neither, for that matter, is Mentor who announce tomorrow). On the earnings call Aart started off:Good afternoon. I’m happy to report that our third quarter results were very strong, as we achieved… Read More
My Candid Conversation with Karen Bartleson
If you don’t know about Karen Bartleson, before I get into details, let me tell you that she was the President of IEEE-SA for the past 2 years and has been nominated by the IEEE Board of Directors as one of the candidates for IEEE President-Elect for 2016. The IEEE is an organization I admire as it plays a key role in advancing technology… Read More
Design For Safety in Automotive Electronics
Do you remember how auto maker Toyota had to pay a $1.2 billion settlement in 2014 because some of their automotive models experienced sudden, unintended acceleration? That scenario has to be an engineer’s worst nightmare because something was missed during the design and testing of an automotive electronics system that… Read More

