I must admit I’m impressed with how CEVA is pulling together foundational solutions for advanced consumer electronics. This through their own technologies (DSP, audio, vision, neural nets) and a rapid pace of partnerships, investments and acquisitions. Off the top of my head, I remember recent announcements on Immervision… Read More
The Accidental Infrastructure: How Crypto Miners Built the Foundation of the AI BoomMost crypto forty-niners died broke in a warehouse…Read More
From Detection to Safety: Reframing Fault Simulation for Functional SafetyIn the early 1980s, when computer-aided engineering (CAE),…Read More
Driving the Future through the “Talent Empowering Program”: Why TSMC Charity Foundation’s Youth Career Initiative MattersThe future of work will not be shaped…Read More
Foundation IP for Intel 18A: Technical Overview and Why It MattersSynopsys Foundation IP for Intel 18A is a…Read More
WEBINAR: Defacto is Boosting Front-end SoC Design With AI-Powered EDA toolsThe real promise of AI in EDA is…Read MoreHow ML Enables Cadence Digital Tools to Deliver Better PPA
There has been a lot written about artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) and its application in the Cadence digital design flow. Most recently, I covered significant verification efficiency improvements in Xcellium ML. A recent digital-themed white paper from Cadence takes a broader look at the impact of ML on… Read More
ASIC and FPGA Design and Verification Trends 2020
Harry Foster and I started in semiconductors at the same time so it was great to reminisce while talking about the latest Wilson Research Group Functional Verification Trend reports. Before I get into the reports lets talk about Harry who is a verification superstar:
Harry is Chief Scientist Verification for the Design Verification… Read More
China Mobile and Computer Update 2020
Data on China production of mobile phones from the National Bureau of Statistics of China indicates a double-digit decline in the year 2020. In 1Q 2020, the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, China mobile phone production declined 50% from 4Q 2019 and dropped 33% from a year earlier. Many factories were temporarily closed in… Read More
Siemens is the True Catalyst for Secure and Trusted Digital Transformation
Introduction
For many years, I pondered the ultimate future of EDA. Companies such as Oracle, SAP and Dassault provide a huge array of enabling software infrastructure for the enterprise, including product design, mechanical design, project management and materials sourcing. But not for the all-important tasks of chip and… Read More
Arm Design Reviews add Mentor for Verification Review
Arm and Mentor Recently announced that the Arm Design Reviews program now offers Mentor help in verification design reviews. I talked to Paul Williams (Sr Consultant and Verification Practice Lead at Mentor Graphics) and Peter Lewin (Dir. Mktg at Arm Partner Enablement Group) to get more insight into Arm Design Services, particularly… Read More
Impact of Defocus and Illumination on Imaging of Pitch
In an earlier article [1], the resolution limit for the space between paired features was described by the Rayleigh criterion of ~0.6 wavelength/numerical aperture, where the numerical aperture (NA) represented the sine of the largest angle for a ray focused from the lens to a point. It is also given by the radius of the lens divided… Read More
Synopsys Enhances Chips and Systems with New Silicon Lifecycle Management Platform
SLM. It’s a TLA (three-letter acronym) that you’ll be hearing more about. It stands for silicon lifecycle management and it has the potential of re-defining the role of EDA in the entire electronics ecosystem. A working definition of SLM is “monitoring, analysis and optimization of semiconductor devices as they are designed,… Read More
Cache Coherence Everywhere may be Easier Than you Think
I attended one of the Arm partner events in Cambridge many years ago, when they first talked about the coherent hub for managing cache coherence. I was impressed, but the obvious question even then was how any non-Arm IP was going to hook into this hub. They had a solution, of course, the ACE interface, and I left satisfied. As is the … Read More
Clarity 3D Transient Solver Speeds Up EMI/EMC Certification
Cadence made waves a while back with its innovative Clarity 3D Solver, a FEM solver for near field EM analysis. Now they are shaking things up with their new far field Clarity 3D Transient Solver. System level EMI and EMC analysis has often exceeded the limits of simulation tools, leading to expensive and time-consuming prototype… Read More


Consolidation and Competition: Who is Winning the $4.5 Billion Interface IP Race?