The foundry problem continued to plague us at Actel. We had a really complex process! But —- we needed state of the art feature sizes if we were to compete with Xilinx. TI and Matsushita had been doing a good job for us, but not in fabs with state of the art technology. We were two process generations behind! At two generations… Read More



Radio: Relevant, Unifying, Intimate, Vulnerable
It was hard to escape the notion while attending RadiodaysAsia2019 that the world is experiencing what can only be called “peak radio.” Radio has the widest audience reach of any content delivery medium anywhere in the world, with the possible exception of India, according to researchers such as Nielsen Media, Gfk, Rajar, Edison
WEBINAR: Reusing Your IPs & PDKs Successfully With Cadence® Virtuoso®
I recently wrote about a ClioSoft® study with Google on using cloud platforms for EDA design and the importance of using persistent storage when doing that. ClioSoft will again be sharing important information on design productivity in the upcoming webinar, Reusing Your IPs & PDKs Successfully With Cadence® Virtuoso®. … Read More
Chapter Ten – Design Automation for Systems
Electronic design automation has evolved to an extent that the complex chips with tens of billions of transistors frequently produce first pass functional prototypes from the manufacturer. What makes this so incredible is that such a small portion of the possible states of electronic operation are actually tested in the simulation… Read More
Synopsys is First IP Provider with a Complete CXL Implementation Available
Synopsys just announced the availability of their IP solution supporting CXL (Compute Express Link). This new protocol is going to be an important component for several applications expected to be shipping starting in 2021. CXL is an alternate protocol that runs on the same physical layer as PCI Express (PCIe). Among other usages,… Read More
Ford Prioritizes Safety; Revolutionizes Connectivity
Ford Motor Company’s debt may have been downgraded to junk this week, but the company’s savvy strategy for vehicle safety and connectivity has had an outsize influence on the broader automotive industry. That is the takeaway message from this week’s ITS California gathering of transportation executives taking place in Los
Tcling Your Way to Low Power Verification
OK – maybe that sounds a little weird, but it’s not a bad description of what Mentor suggests in a recent white-paper. There are at least three aspects to power verification – static verification of the UPF and the UPF against the RTL, formal verification of state transition logic, and dynamic verification of at least some critical… Read More
GM’s Dashboard Surrender
There was a time when General Motors’ OnStar offering was readily and clearly understood by consumers for the fact that it did one thing incredibly well: summoning assistance in the event of a vehicle crash and airbag deployment. This now-23-year-old connected car solution still stands strong as a powerful brand-defining … Read More
AI Chip Prototyping Plan
I recently had the opportunity to sit down with a chip designer for an AI start-up to talk about using FPGA prototyping as part of a complex silicon verification strategy. Like countless other chip designers for whom simulation alone simply does not provide sufficient verification coverage, this AI start-up also believed that… Read More
For EDA Users: The Cloud Should Not Be Just a Compute Farm
When EDA users first started considering using cloud services from Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and others, their initial focus was getting access for specific design functions, such as long logic or circuit simulation runs or long DRC runs, not necessarily for their entire design flow. If you choose to use the cloud this way, you… Read More
Should the US Government Invest in Intel?