Mergers and acquisitions have been a big part of EDA since the beginning. We keep an EDA/IP Mergers and Acquisitions Wiki, it is 13 years old now and has more than one million views. Personally, I have been involved with dozens of acquisitions over my 40 year career, some good, some bad, all are interesting and are an important part … Read More
Synopsys Geared for Next Era’s Opportunity and Growth
As semiconductor industry folks know, Synopsys is a behemoth of a company. At $5.84B in FY2023 revenue (FY Nov-Oct), approximately 20,000 employees and a market cap of about $74B, it leads the silicon-to-systems design solutions space within the industry. From humble beginnings in 1986 as a disruptive startup, the company has… Read More
RISC-V and Chiplets: A Panel Discussion
At the recent RISC-V Summit, the very last session was a panel about chiplets called Chiplets in the RISC-V Ecosystem. It was moderated by Calista Redmond, the CEO of RISC-V International. The panelists were:
- Laurent Moll, COO of Arteris
- Aniket Saha, VP of Product Management of Tenstorrent
- Dale Greenley, VP of Engineering of Ventana
Automated Constraints Promotion Methodology for IP to Complex SoC Designs
In the world of semiconductor design, constraints are essentially specifications and requirements that guide the implementation of a specific hardware or software component within a larger system. They dictate timing, area, power, performance, and of course functionality of a design, playing a crucial role in ensuring that… Read More
UCIe InterOp Testchip Unleashes Growth of Open Chiplet Ecosystem
Intel recently made headlines when CEO Pat Gelsinger unveiled the world’s first UCIe interoperability test chip demo at Innovation 2023. The test chip built using advanced packaging technology is codenamed Pike Creek and is used to demonstrate interoperability across chiplets designed by Intel and Synopsys. More details … Read More
Synopsys.ai Ups the AI Ante with Copilot
Last week Synopsys announced their next step in generative AI (GenAI) in Synopsys.ai Copilot based on a collaboration with Microsoft. This integrates Azure OpenAI together with existing Synopsys.ai GenAI capabilities to extend Copilot concepts to the EDA world. For those of you unfamiliar with Copilot, this is a development… Read More
Synopsys 224G SerDes IP’s Extensive Ecosystem Interoperability
Hyperscale data centers are evolving rapidly to meet the demands of high-bandwidth, low-latency applications, ranging from AI and high-performance computing (HPC) to telecommunications and 4K video streaming. The increasing need for faster data transfer rates has prompted a scaling of Ethernet from 51Tb/s to 100Tb/s. Numerous… Read More
Synopsys Debuts RISC-V IP Product Families
Synopsys has just announced that it has expanded its ARC processor portfolio to include a family of RISC-V processors. These will be branded under the ARC name as ARC-V and are expected to become available in 2024. This is a significant announcement which I attempt to unpack briefly below.
Why add RISC-V to the portfolio and why now?
… Read MoreA Fast Path to Better ARC PPA through Fusion Quickstart Implementation Kits and DSO.AI
Synopsys recently presented a webinar on using their own software to optimize one of their own IPs (an ARC HS68 processor) for both performance and power through what looks like a straightforward flow from initial configuration through first level optimization to more comprehensive AI-driven PPA optimization. Also of note … Read More
100G/200G Electro-Optical Interfaces: The Future for Low Power, Low Latency Data Centers
Electrical copper interconnects, once the backbone of data center networks, are facing growing challenges. Rapid expansion of AI and ML applications is driving a significant increase in cluster sizes within data centers, resulting in substantial demands for faster I/O capabilities. While the surge in I/O requirements is … Read More