If you are familiar with high bandwidth networking applications, you probably know this chip-to-chip (C2C) interface protocol. Interlaken architecture, fully flexible, configurable and scalable, is also an elegant answer to the need for very high bandwidth C2C communication. Interlaken is elegant because the protocol … Read More




Attending DAC in Austin for Free
I’ve been attending DAC since the late 1980’s and can tell you that it’s an annual highlight for me and anyone else interested in the EDA, IP and semiconductor industries. Where else can you see most of the big and little vendors of EDA software, semiconductor IP and foundries in one place? I recently blogged about… Read More
How Far Has Design Automation Brought Us?
It’s always a struggle explaining electronic design automation (EDA) to people who ask me what field I am in. I have come up with simple and minimal descriptions – such as “software used for designing semiconductors.” This, of course, does little to provide any useful understanding to people who are not familiar with the field.… Read More
Machine Learning and EDA!
Semiconductor design is littered with complex, data-driven challenges where the cost of error is high. Solido’s new ML (machine learning) Labs, based on Solido’s ML technologies developed over the last 12 years, allows semiconductor companies to collaboratively work with Solido in developing new ML-based EDA products.
Data… Read More
The 4C’s of PCB Design
The diamond jewelry industry encourages customers to focus on the 4C’s — cut, clarity, color, and carats. At the recent PCB Forum conducted by Mentor (a Siemens business) in Santa Clara, I learned that current system design flows also require an emphasis on the 4C’s — collaboration, concurrency, consistency… Read More
Webinar: Getting to Formal Coverage
Facing rapidly growing challenges in getting to respectable coverage, designers have been turning more and more to formal verification, not just to plug gaps but increasingly to take over verification of significant components of the testplan. Which is great, but at the end of the day any approach to verification must be measured… Read More
Virtual Reality
In the world of hardware emulators, virtualization is a hot and sometimes contentious topic. It’s hot because emulators are expensive, creating a lot of pressure to maximize return on that investment through multi-user sharing and 24×7 operation. And of course in this cloud-centric world it doesn’t hurt to promote cloud-like… Read More
Autonomous Vehicles: Tesla, Uber, Lyft, BMW, Intel and Mentor Graphics
I read at least one hour of news every day to keep informed, and I’ve read so many stories about autonomous vehicles that the same, familiar company names continue to dominate the thought leadership. What really caught my attention this month was an announcement about autonomous vehicle technology coming from Mentor Graphics… Read More
SPIE 2017 – ASML Interview and Presentations
At the SPIE Advanced Lithography conference I sat down with Mike Lercel, Director of Strategic Marketing for ASML for an update. ASML also presented several papers at the conference and I attended many of these. In this article, I will discuss my interview with Mike and summarize the ASML presentations.… Read More
Making Cars Smarter And Safer
The news media has naturally focused on the handful of deaths that have occurred while auto-pilot features have been enabled. In reality, automobile deaths are occurring at a lower rate now than ever. In 2014 the rate was 1.08 deaths per 100 million miles driven. Compare that to the 5.06 per 100M miles in 1960, or a whopping 24.09 in… Read More
Should the US Government Invest in Intel?