About 6 months ago, ANSYS was approached by a couple of leading mobile platform vendors/suppliers with a challenging problem. These companies were hitting target 2.5GHz performance goals on their (N10 or N7) application processors, but getting about 10% lower yield than expected, which they attributed to performance failures.… Read More





Safety Critical Applications Require Onboard Aging Monitoring
When it comes to safety, ISO 26262 is the spec that comes to mind for many people. However, there are layers of specifications that enable the level of safety required for automotive and other systems that need high reliability. For any application requiring safety, test is a critical element. A key spec for SOC test is IEEE 1500, … Read More
Combining IP and Product Lifecycle Tools
No single EDA company provides all of the tools needed to define requirements, design exploration, track IP, simulate, manage and verify a complex SoC system, so it makes sense that EDA vendors and point tool companies have tools that work together to achieve all of these difficult tasks. Systems design has been around for decades… Read More
Functional Safety Methodologies for Automotive Applications
During Q&A session at San Jose GTC 2018, nVidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang reiterated that critical functional safety, such as in autonomous vehicle, requires both the redundancy and the diversity aspects. For example, CUDA with Tensor core and GPU with DLA were both utilized. Safety is paramount to automotive applications. Any… Read More
Tutorial on Advanced Formal: NVIDIA and Qualcomm
I recently posted a blog on the first half of a tutorial Synopsys hosted at DVCon (2018). This blog covers the second half of that 3½ hour event (so you can see why I didn’t jam it all into one blog :D. The general theme was on advanced use models, the first half covering use of invariants and induction and views from a Samsung expert on efficient… Read More
Schematic porting – the key to analog design reuse
At the beginning of every project the one of the first questions that ought to be asked is whether there blocks from previous designs that can be reused. On the surface this seems pretty obvious. The wrinkle in this is that reusability varies a lot based on the design type and the effort that a team is willing to expend to bring a design… Read More
FPGA Prototyping Speeds Design Realization for the Internet of Things
When we talk about the Internet of Things (IoT), it isn’t a stretch to say that every intelligent device we interact with will become connected, sharing vast amounts of data with one another to make our lives more efficient. It isn’t only consumers of smart home, infotainment, and wearable technologies that are driving the demand,… Read More
Intel to buy Micron – Trump Blocks IC Equipment Sales to China – Broadcom Fighting for QCOM
It has been reported over the holiday weekend that Intel is in talks with Micron over a proposed merger that would value Micron at $70 per share in a deal of a combination of stock and cash for Micron shareholders. It is said that the boards of both companies have already approved the deal.
Intel’s CEO Brian Krzanich said, “We… Read More
Nvidia: What the Doctor Ordered
Nvidia has an affinity for taking on computational challenges. Whether it be diagnostic tools derived from medical imaging, mapping the earth’s core or defining the structure of HIV, Nvidia is there with GPU computational resources to amp up the teraflops and shrink the computing time. In fact, according to Nvidia’s most recent… Read More
FlexE at SoC IP Days with Open Silicon
On Thursday April 5th the Design and Reuse SoC IP days continues in Santa Clara at the Hyatt Regency (my favorite hangout). SemiWiki is a co-sponsor and I am Chairman of the IP Security Track. More than 400 people have registered thus far and I expect a big turnout, if you look at the program you will see why. You should also know that registration… Read More
Rapidus, IBM, and the Billion-Dollar Silicon Sovereignty Bet