In the EDA world we use hyphens quite often to describe our technical approaches, like: DFM-aware, Power-aware, Variation-aware. I just read a white papertoday on the topic of Quality-Aware IP Design Flows, written by Fractal Technologies. If your group creates IP or re-uses IP, then there’s always the question about … Read More
Samsung Voice of the Body
I just back from Samsung’s big announcement held at the SFJazz center (very conveniently 15 minutes walk from my place). They put a stake in the ground about their program at the intersection of medicine and health and technology. They had said in advance that they would not announce any new hardware but in fact they did…although… Read More
RedHawk Excels – Customers Endorse
Since a few years, I have been following up Ansys Apachetools for semiconductor design, verification and sign-off. RedHawk is the most prominent platform of tools from Ansys, specifically for Power, Noise and Reliability Sign-off. It has witnessed many open endorsements from several of Ansyscustomers through open presentations,… Read More
Understanding QoR in FPGA synthesis
We’ve all heard this claim: “Our FPGA synthesis tool produces better quality of results (QoR).” If you’re just hoping for a tool to do that automagically, you’re probably doing it wrong. Getting better QoR depends on understanding what an FPGA synthesis tool is capable of, and how to leverage what it tells you.… Read More
DRM2PDK: From design rule manual to process design kit
Exactly a year ago Sage Design Automation launched its revolutionary iDRM product, enabling for the first time to graphically capture design rules and compile them into checks automatically – no programming required. Using the graphical design rule editor, users could draw the layout topology that describes the design… Read More
Two New ESL Tools for Power and Thermal at DAC
Gary Smith published a list of what to see at DAC, and I noticed that he listed DOCEA Power in a category of ESL Thermal. I’ll be meeting the DOCEA engineers on Wednesday at DAC to learn more about their two newest ESL products:
- Thermal Profiler
- Power Intelligence
In general DOCEA Power tools allow you to manage power and thermal… Read More
Different Approaches to System Level Power Modeling and Analysis for Early Design Phases
At DATEthis year in Dresden, Bernhard Fischer from Siemens CT(Corporate Technology) has presented an interesting summary of the various techniques used for power modeling and analysis at the architectural level. He went through the pros and cons of using spreadsheets, timed virtual platforms annotated with power numbers … Read More
The Chip Design Game at the End of Moore’s Law
I just came across and interesting video from last year’s Hot Chips conference. Dr. Robert Colwell of DARPA discusses how the processor design industry is likely to change after it becomes too difficult to continue scaling transistors to ever-smaller dimensions. This is likely to occur sometime within the next decade,… Read More
SEMICON West 2014 Preview
There is a really big conference coming up in San Francisco…no, not DAC although of course that is coming up too. I’m talking about SEMICON West which is much bigger, filling all 3 Moscone exhibit halls. It is July 8-10th. It is, of course, the semiconductor equipment industry (and solar) show.
The opening keynote on… Read More
Mark Milligan Joins Calypto. Plus Google at DAC
I talked to Mark Milligan this morning, who has just joined Calypto as VP Marketing. I first met Mark back when he was at CoWare and I was at VaST or maybe it was Virtutech. Then he moved on and ran marketing at SpringSoft which, I’m sure you remember, Synopsys acquired. I asked him what encouraged him to join Calypto.
He said that… Read More
Real men have fabs!