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Tesla Leap of Faith (or the Adoration of Elon Musk)

Tesla Leap of Faith (or the Adoration of Elon Musk)
by Roger C. Lanctot on 08-08-2018 at 7:00 am

The Reverend Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors, held forth to his flock on yesterday’s earnings call. Musk described at length his efforts to lead the company out of production hell. The lengthy session highlighted the challenges facing the company, which posted its greatest quarterly loss ever, and was emblematic of the typical … Read More


Timing Closure Techniques for SOCs with Embedded FPGA Fabric

Timing Closure Techniques for SOCs with Embedded FPGA Fabric
by Tom Simon on 08-07-2018 at 12:00 pm

Once the benefits of using an embedded FPGA fabric are understood, the next question is about how timing closure is handled between the ASIC and the eFPGA blocks. First let’s look briefly at the advantages. By moving the eFPGA on to the SOC die, tons of I/O logic and the need for any package and board interconnect will vanish. Package… Read More


Timing Channel Attacks are Your Problem Too

Timing Channel Attacks are Your Problem Too
by Bernard Murphy on 08-07-2018 at 7:00 am

You’ve heard about Meltdown and Spectre and you know they’re really bad security bugs (in different ways). If you’ve dug deeper, you know that these problems are related to the speculative execution common in modern processors, and if you dug deeper still you may have learned that underlying both problems are exploits called timing… Read More


Cadence Update on AMS Design and Verification at #55DAC

Cadence Update on AMS Design and Verification at #55DAC
by Daniel Payne on 08-06-2018 at 12:00 pm

As a blogger in the EDA industry I get more invitations to meet with folks at DAC than I have time slots, so I have to be a bit selective in who I meet. When the folks at Cadence asked me to sit down and chat with Mladen Nizic I was intrigued because Mladen is so well-known in the AMS language area and he’s one of the authors of, The Mixed-SignalRead More


Synopsys Offers First Single-Vendor Comprehensive Photonic IC Design Flow

Synopsys Offers First Single-Vendor Comprehensive Photonic IC Design Flow
by Daniel Nenni on 08-06-2018 at 7:00 am

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

Career Change Advice and how EDA Hiring has Changed
by Mark Gilbert on 08-05-2018 at 7:00 am

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

An update on the Design Productivity Gap
by Tom Dillinger on 08-03-2018 at 12:00 pm

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

Speak N Spell
by Daniel Nenni on 08-03-2018 at 7:00 am

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

Netspeed and NSITEXE talk about automotive design trends at 55DAC
by Tom Simon on 08-02-2018 at 12:00 pm

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 gets an EUV Kicker
by Robert Maire on 08-02-2018 at 7:00 am

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