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Why Design Data Management: A View from CERN

Why Design Data Management: A View from CERN
by Majeed Ahmad on 05-27-2015 at 10:00 pm

On July 4, 2012, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, announced that the ATLAS and CMS experiments had each observed a new particle, which is consistent with the Higgs boson predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics. The Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) is a general-purpose detector with a broad physics… Read More


Will Dark Silicon Dictate Server Blade Architecture?

Will Dark Silicon Dictate Server Blade Architecture?
by Tom Simon on 05-27-2015 at 7:00 pm

Does the evil sounding phenomenon known as Dark Silicon create a big opportunity for FPGA vendors as was predicted recently by Pacific Crest Securities? John Vinh posits that using multiple cores as a method of scaling throughput is flattening out, and the use of FPGA’s to perform computation can help off-load and thus overcome… Read More


Getting the Best Dynamic Power Analysis Numbers

Getting the Best Dynamic Power Analysis Numbers
by Daniel Payne on 05-27-2015 at 1:00 pm

On your last SoC project how well did your dynamic power estimates match up with silicon results, especially while running real applications on your electronic product? If your answer was, “Well, not too good”, then keep reading this blog. A classical approach to dynamic power analysis is to run your functional testbench… Read More


FinFET: The Miller’s Tale

FinFET: The Miller’s Tale
by Paul McLellan on 05-27-2015 at 7:00 am

In Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the second of the tales told by the pilgrims is The Miller’s Tale. Since this is a family blog, I’ll leave you to research the tale yourself. But FinFETs hide another Miller’s Tale, due to Miller capacitance, sometimes called the Miller effect. This is significant since in FinFET designs Miller capacitance… Read More


Synopsys Earnings Call

Synopsys Earnings Call
by Paul McLellan on 05-27-2015 at 12:00 am

Synopsys had their earnings announcement and call last week. They were good. In Aart’s own words:I’m happy to report that our second quarter results were very strong and solidify our outlook for the full year. We delivered revenue of $557 million, non-GAAP earnings per share of $0.68 and $155 million in operation cash flow.Read More


Why does Apple do business with Samsung?

Why does Apple do business with Samsung?
by Daniel Nenni on 05-26-2015 at 10:00 pm

The Apple and Samsung relationship is an interesting one. On one hand they have co-developed some of the most innovative products on the market today (iPod, iPhone, iPad, iWatch) yet they are fierce competitors in the mobile market. Some call this type of business relationship “frenemies” others refer to the old Italian proverb… Read More


Taking a Leap Forward to Prototype Billion Gate Designs

Taking a Leap Forward to Prototype Billion Gate Designs
by Pawan Fangaria on 05-26-2015 at 12:00 pm

It’s very common these days to hear about a billion gates SoC, but not without a huge design and verification effort and investment of resources. A complete verification of such an SoC needs several verification steps including software and hardware based methodologies that often are not sufficient to cover the whole SoC. In order… Read More


How Good Is Your Library? Are You Sure?

How Good Is Your Library? Are You Sure?
by Paul McLellan on 05-26-2015 at 7:00 am

 

One task that is not very exciting but is critical is that of library quality assurance. Many design groups have created their own procedures, often having been burned in the past, to ensure that the libraries that they use are good. Failure to do so has resulted in:… Read More


How to design silicon photonics–take this class!

How to design silicon photonics–take this class!
by Beth Martin on 05-25-2015 at 9:30 pm

Silicon Photonics is the hottest prospect for blazing fast communication between chips in servers, data centers, and supercomputers.

By using light instead of electrical signals, it promise to usher in a new standard of high performance, low power devices while extending the use of more mature process nodes, helping to reduce… Read More


CEVA DSPs and the Tale of Two Chip Underdogs from China

CEVA DSPs and the Tale of Two Chip Underdogs from China
by Majeed Ahmad on 05-25-2015 at 1:30 pm

Leadcore Technology Co. Ltd, a subsidiary of Datang Group, is a silicon success story from China. It recently made waves by snatching the baseband socket from Qualcomm in Xiaomi’s sub-$100 LTE smartphone Redmi 2A. Leadcore’s L1860C chipset included quad-core 1.5GHz CPU and Mali-T628MP2 GPU from ARM and LTE modem… Read More