The origin of ARM’s success in mobile phone space is largely traced to Symbian’s decision to exclusively support the ARM Instruction Set Architecture (ISA). This in turn was the consequence of a mid-1990s decision by Texas Instruments to use ARM in its mobile phone ASICs for Nokia, the driving force behind the inception of the Symbian… Read More
Weebit Nano at the 2024 Design Automation ConferenceWe all know that the proliferation of AI…Read More
Empyrean at the 2024 Design Automation ConferenceEmpyrean Technologies is excited to introduce our comprehensive…Read MoreAMIQ EDA at the 2024 Design Automation ConferenceAMIQ EDA is a pioneer in integrated development…Read More
proteanTecs at the 2024 Design Automation ConferenceMeet with proteanTecs at DAC. Explore our full set…Read MoreSigasi at the 2024 Design Automation ConferenceSigasi® will demonstrate its Sigasi Visual HDL™ (SVH™)…Read More
Windows on a TV
This month I upgraded my TV at home with a 40″ LED set from Samsung, Denon AV receiver and Samsung Blu-ray player. Also being a Google fan I bought a Chromecast device.
At CES there were multiple announcements from Intel, and one that caught my eye was the Intel Compute Stick because it reminded me of the Google Chromecast device… Read More
Tracing Insight into Advanced Multicore Systems
After knowing about the challenges involved in validating multicore systems and domains of system and application level tracing as explained by Don Dingee in his article “Tracing methods to multicore gladness” which is based on the first part of Mentor Embedded multicore whitepaper series, it’s time to take a deeper insight … Read More
Managing Semiconductor IP
SemiWiki blogger Eric Esteve does an excellent job writing about all of the semiconductor IP available, and the popularity of IP is only growing more each year. Here’s a projection from IBS about semiconductor IP showing revenues of $4.7B by 2020:
Analyst Gary Smith divides IP into three broad categories: Functional, Foundation… Read More
Analyzing Power Nets
One of the big challenges in a modern SoC is doing an accurate analysis of the power nets. Different layers of metal have very different resistance characteristics (since they vary so much in width and height). Even vias can cause problems due to high resistance. Typically power is distributed globally on high-level metal layers,… Read More
Not All RTL Synthesis Approaches are the Same
My first experience with logic synthesis was at Silicon Compilers in the late 1980s using a tool called Genesil. Process technology since that time has moved from 3 um down to 20 nm, so there are new challenges for RTL synthesis. Today you can find logic synthesis tools being offered by the big three in EDA: Synopsys, Cadence, Mentor… Read More
Methodics Access Controls
My PhD thesis is titled The Design of a Network Filing System. Yes, that was a research topic back then (and yes, we did call them filing systems not file-systems). One big chapter was on access controls. There are several problems with designing an access control system:
- it needs to be possible to implement it efficiently
- it needs
Aldec increasing the return on simulation
Debate rages about which approach is better for SoC design: simulation, or emulation. Simulation proponents point to software saving the need for expensive hardware platforms. Emulation supporters stake their claims on accuracy and the incorporation of real-time I/O. A few years back, some creative types coined the term SEmulation,… Read More
Analyze Substrate Noise in SoC Design?
Often substrate noise analysis takes place when everything is there on the chip, but that stage comes near the tape-out which is too late to make major changes in architecture, placement, introducing noise protection circuitry for the victims and so on. It was okay when there used to be very little analog content on the chip. But … Read More
FDSOI jump-start 2015 in Tokyo this week
This news in May 2014 that Samsung had licensed FD-SOI Technology from ST-Microelectronics was really amazing, as most of the industry was expecting this kind of agreement, but not with the #2 SC Company. But since May 2014 the news flow has been quite reduced, we can imagine that both SC companies had a lot work to do for transforming… Read More
Intel and TSMC IDM 2024 Discussions