Synopsys has a long history of being a thought leader and it’s not surprising to see the company jumping into the forefront of new technologies. For decades, I’ve been steeped in electronic IC design and it caught me by surprise to find that Synopsys had been quietly working on filling out their portfolio in the optical design solutions… Read More





Career Change Advice and how EDA Hiring has Changed
I think most of us can attest that changing jobs is one of the most stressful decisions we make, as our careers progress. Making a job change is rarely an easy decision, though admittedly, so wonderful when it accomplishes your career and life goals. Having the right, well thought out expectations is the best way to ensure success,… Read More
An update on the Design Productivity Gap
Over a decade ago, a group of semiconductor industry experts published a landmark paper as part of the periodic updates to the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors, or ITRS for short (link). The ITRS identified a critical design productivity gap. The circuit capacity afforded by the Moore’s Law pace of technology… Read More
Speak N Spell
This is the ninth in the series of “20 Questions with Wally Rhines”
Success has many authors and the Speak & Spell product from Texas Instruments generated lots of write-ups to demonstrate this. For most of the semiconductor industry, results of innovation were not apparent to the masses but, for the consumer … Read More
Netspeed and NSITEXE talk about automotive design trends at 55DAC
DAC is where both sides of the design equation come together for discussion and learning. This is what makes attending DAC discussion panels so interesting; you are going to hear from providers of tools, methodologies and IP as well as those who need to use them to deliver working solutions. There are few places where the interplay… Read More
KLAC gets an EUV Kicker
KLAC put up a great quarter coming in at revenues of $1.07B and EPS of $2.22. Guidance is for $1.03B to $1.1B with EPS of $2 to $2.32. Both reported and guided were at the high end of the range and above consensus. We had suggested in our preview notes that KLAC would be the least impacted of the big three (AMAT, LRCX & KLAC) semi equipment… Read More
Accelerating the PCB Design-Analysis Optimization Loop
With the increasing complexity and diversity of the mechanical constraints and electrical requirements in electronic product development, printed circuit board designers are faced with a number of difficult challenges:
- generating accurate (S-parameter) simulation models for critical interface elements of the design
AMS Experts Share IC Design Stories at #55DAC
At #55DAC in SFO the first day is always the busiest on the exhibit floor, so Monday by lunch time I was hungry and took a short walk to the Marriott hotel nearby to listen to AMS experts from several companies talk about their EDA tool use, hosted by Synopsys:
- Samsung
- Toshiba Memory Corp.
- NVIDIA
- Seagate
- Numem
- Esperanto
Verification Importance in Academia
“Testing can only prove the presence of bugs, not their absence,” stated the famous computer scientist Edsger Dijkstra. That notion rings true to the many college participants of the Hack@DAC competition offered during DAC 2018 in San Francisco. The goal of this competition is to develop tools and methods for identifying security… Read More
Webinar: Differential Energy Analysis for Improved Performance/Watt in Mobile GPU
May want to listen up; Qualcomm are going to be sharing how they do this. There is a constant battle in designing for low power; you don’t accurately know what the power consumption is going to be until you build it, but by the time you’ve built it, it’s too late to change the design. So you have to find methods to estimate power early on,… Read More
Rapidus, IBM, and the Billion-Dollar Silicon Sovereignty Bet