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The Quest for Bugs: Dilemmas of Hardware Verification

The Quest for Bugs: Dilemmas of Hardware Verification
by Bryan Dickman on 02-28-2021 at 6:00 am

The Quest for Bugs Dilemmas of Hardware Verfication

Functional Verification for complex ASICs or IP-Core products is a resource limited ‘quest’ to find as many bugs as possible before tape-out or release. It can be a long, difficult and costly search that is constrained by cost, time and quality. The search space is practically infinite, and 100% exhaustive verification is an unrealisticRead More


Podcast EP9: Why Fabs and Fabless Matter

Podcast EP9: Why Fabs and Fabless Matter
by Daniel Nenni on 02-26-2021 at 10:00 am

Dan and Mike are joined by Ray Zinn, the longest serving CEO in Silicon Valley. Join us for a tour of the very beginnings of the semiconductor industry and the rise of the fabless movement. Beyond a historical perspective, Ray also discusses the importance of semiconductor technology and its impact on the world, governments and … Read More


CEO interview: Graham Curren of Sondrel

CEO interview: Graham Curren of Sondrel
by Daniel Nenni on 02-26-2021 at 6:00 am

Graham Curren CEO Sondrel 13.12.29

It has been my pleasure to interview Graham Curren, CEO of Sondrel. A veteran of the Electronics Design industry, he founded Sondrel in 2002 to provide digital ASIC designs.

How did you aim to differentiate Sondrel when you started?
My view of the market was that there were a lot of small design companies and also huge in-house design… Read More


FD-SOI Offers Refreshing Performance and Flexibility for Mobile Applications

FD-SOI Offers Refreshing Performance and Flexibility for Mobile Applications
by Tom Simon on 02-25-2021 at 10:00 am

FD SOI Advantages

SoC designers often have to make a, “red pill or blue pill,” decision when it comes to selecting process technology. Usually, a choice has to be made between performance, power and area, with one being prioritized at the expense of the others. However, as is pointed out in a recent paper by Mixel and NXP, designers can have the best … Read More


Key Requirements for Effective SoC Verification Management

Key Requirements for Effective SoC Verification Management
by Kirankumar Karanam on 02-25-2021 at 6:00 am

The Four Phases of SoC Verification

Effective and efficient functional verification is one of the biggest hurdles for today’s large and complex system-on-chip (SoC) designs. The goal is to verify as close as possible to 100% of the design’s specified functionality before committing to the long and expensive tape-out process for application-specific integrated… Read More


HCL Expands Cloud Choices with a Comprehensive Guide to Azure Deployment

HCL Expands Cloud Choices with a Comprehensive Guide to Azure Deployment
by Mike Gianfagna on 02-24-2021 at 10:00 am

HCL Expands Cloud Choices with a Comprehensive Guide to Azure Deployment

HCL Compass is quite a powerful tool to accelerate project delivery and increase developer productivity. Last August I detailed a webinar about HCL Compass that will help you understand the benefits and impact of a tool like this. This technology falls into the category of DevOps, which aims to shorten the systems development … Read More


Finding Large Coverage Holes. Innovation in Verification

Finding Large Coverage Holes. Innovation in Verification
by Bernard Murphy on 02-24-2021 at 6:00 am

Innovation image 2021 min

Is it possible to find and prioritize holes in coverage through AI-based analytics on coverage data? Paul Cunningham (GM, Verification at Cadence), Jim Hogan and I continue our series on research ideas. As always, feedback welcome.

The Innovation

This month’s pick is Using Machine Learning Clustering To Find Large Coverage Read More


Single HW/SW Bill of Material (BoM) Benefits System Development

Single HW/SW Bill of Material (BoM) Benefits System Development
by Daniel Payne on 02-23-2021 at 10:00 am

Perforce - IP

Most large electronics companies take a divide and conquer approach to projects, with clear division lines set between HW and SW engineers, so quite often the separate teams have distinct methodologies and ways to design, document, communicate and save a BoM. This division can lead to errors in the system development process,… Read More


Achronix Demystifies FPGA Technology Migration

Achronix Demystifies FPGA Technology Migration
by Tom Simon on 02-23-2021 at 6:00 am

FPGA Migration Achronix Tool Flow

System designers who are switching to a new FPGA platform have a lot to think about. Naturally a change like this is usually done for good reasons, but there are always considerations regarding device configurations, interfaces and the tool chain to deal with. To help users who have decided to switch to their FPGA technology, Achronix… Read More


Silicon Catalyst and mmTron are Helping to Make mmWave 5G a Reality

Silicon Catalyst and mmTron are Helping to Make mmWave 5G a Reality
by Mike Gianfagna on 02-22-2021 at 10:00 am

Silicon Catalyst and mmTron are Helping to Make 5G a Reality

Everyone is talking about 5G these days. The buildout is beginning. The newest iPhone supports the new 3GPP standard. Excitement is building. But there is a back story to all this. Silicon Catalyst recently added a new company called mmTron to their incubator program. These folks are millimeter wave experts and that turns out to… Read More