Advanced board designs are fertile ground for misbehavior in time and frequency domains. Relying on intuition, then waiting until near-final product for power integrity (PI) or EMI testing almost guarantees board respins are coming. Lumped-parameter simulations of on-board power delivery networks (PDNs) struggle with … Read More


Faster Time to RTL Simulation Using Incremental Build Flows
I’ve been following Neil Johnson on Twitter and LinkedIn for several years now, as he has written and shared so much about the IC design and verification process, both as a consultant and working at EDA vendors. His recent white paper for Siemens EDA caught my eye, so I took the time to read through the 10 page document to learn… Read More
Breker Attacks System Coherency Verification
The great thing about architectural solutions to increasing throughput is that they offer big improvements. Multiple CPUs on a chip with (partially) shared cache hierarchies are now commonplace in server processors for this reason. But that big gain comes with significant added complexity in verifying correct behavior. In… Read More
KLAC- Great quarter and year – March Q is turning point of supply chain problem
-KLAC – great QTR & calendar year but supply chain impacted
-Management feels supply chain to improve after March Q
-Demand remains strong, driven by foundry/logic
-Process management is next best place in industry after litho
Great end to calendar year
KLA reported revenues of $2.53B with non GAAP EPS of $5.59 nicely… Read More
Apple and OnStar: Privacy vs. Emergency Response
In the season 6 premiere of Showtime’s “Billions,”, financier Michael Prince and his lieutenant are remotely monitoring Wags’ heart rate thanks to an Oura-like smart ring as he works out on a Peloton stationary bike. The remote observers conclude Wags is having a heart attack and dispatch emergency medical technicians to his… Read More
LRCX- Supply Chain Catches up with Lam- Gets worse before better- Demand solid
-Supply chain issues finally catch up to Lam- Ongoing issue
-Problem from one main supplier to spread to more
-Causes low December Quarter and soft guide for March
-Quarters could be lumpy due to differed & revenue push outs
Lam Stews over supply Chain Issues
It sucks when you have all the demand in the world but can’t build… Read More
Tesla: Kick-ass Radio in an EV
It seems that all we hear about over-the-air radio broadcasts in electric vehicles is that AM is going away due to interference and FM is irrelevant due to streaming apps. Tesla has very affirmatively upended this conventional wisdom with an over-the-air update that adds Xperi’s DTS AutoStage to most Tesla’s.
This… Read More
Podcast EP59: A brief history of semiconductors and EDA with Rich Goldman
Dan is joined by good friend and fellow boater Rich Goldman. Rich has a storied career in EDA that began at TI with Morris Chang and Wally Rhines, continued through a long career at Synopsys and included a book collaboration with Neil Armstrong, Stephen Hawking and Brian May (the lead guitarist for Queen),
Dan and Rich cover a lot … Read More
WEBINAR: How to add a NIST-Certified Random Number Generator to any IoT device?
In the first half of 2021, the number of attacks on IoT devices more than doubled to 1.5 billion attacks in just six months. These attacks target some typical weaknesses, such as the use of weak passwords, lack of regular patches and updates, insecure interfaces, and insufficient data protection. However, researchers from Bishop… Read More
SIP Modules Solve Numerous Scaling Problems – But Introduce New Issues
Multi-chip modules are now more important than ever, even though the basic concept has been around for decades. With The effects of Moore’s Law and other factors such as yield, power, and process choices, reasons for dividing what once would have been a single SOC into multiple die and integrating them in a single module have become… Read More
Moving Beyond RTL at #62DAC