CAST Compression IP Webinar 800x100 (2)

Webinar: Collaboration Within Dispersed Design Teams

Webinar: Collaboration Within Dispersed Design Teams
by Daniel Nenni on 08-30-2014 at 7:00 am

In the face of shrinking time-to-market windows, semiconductor companies are aggressively vying with each other to emerge with new or variants of existing ICs and SoCs to gain market share. The growth of the mobile market –wireless, networking, storage, and computing – as well as new areas such as the Internet of things (IoT) and… Read More


Assertion Synthesis: From Startup to Mainstream

Assertion Synthesis: From Startup to Mainstream
by Daniel Payne on 08-30-2014 at 7:00 am

In college many of us dreamed of starting up our own company by offering something new that has never been done before. Today I spoke by phone with Yunshan Zhuin Shanghai, and he has actually lived out this scenario by founding NextOp in 2006, then getting that company acquired by Atrentain 2012. The new capability that NextOp created… Read More


Transistor-level Sizing Optimization

Transistor-level Sizing Optimization
by Daniel Payne on 08-29-2014 at 4:00 pm

RTL designers know that their code gets transformed into gates and cells by using a logic synthesis tool, however these gates and cells are further comprised of transistors and sometimes you really need to optimize the transistor sizing to reach power, performance and area goals. I’ve done transistor-level IC design before,… Read More


FinFET Design for Power, Noise and Reliability

FinFET Design for Power, Noise and Reliability
by Daniel Payne on 08-29-2014 at 4:00 pm

IC designers have been running analysis tools for power, noise and reliability for many years now, so what is new when you start using FinFET transistors instead of planar transistors? Calvin Chow from ANSYS (Apache Design) presented on this topic earlier in the summer through a 33 minutewebinar that has been archived. There is… Read More


Improving Complex System Design

Improving Complex System Design
by Paul McLellan on 08-29-2014 at 7:01 am

Next week Mike Jensen of Mentor will present a webinar Improving Complex System Design Reliability and Robustness. The webinar will be presented live twice and presumably available for replay soon after, as is usually the case:

  • September 4th 6.00-6.45am pacific (9pm in Asia, 3pm in most of Europe)
  • September 4th 10.00-10.45am
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New details on Altera network-on-FPGA

New details on Altera network-on-FPGA
by Don Dingee on 08-28-2014 at 4:00 pm

Advantages to using NoCs in SoC design are well documented: reduced routing congestion, better performance than crossbars, improved optimization and reuse of IP, strategies for system power management, and so on. What happens when NoCs move into FPGAs, or more accurately the SoC variant combining ARM cores with programmable… Read More


Granite River Labs and TSMC Expand Agreement

Granite River Labs and TSMC Expand Agreement
by Paul McLellan on 08-28-2014 at 7:01 am

For several years now, TSMC has run increasingly sophisticated IP validation. Ramping a new process as a foundry requires a number of things to all come together almost simultaneously: the process, of course, and some designs to run and start to recover the huge capital investment a modern fab entails. With many SoCs having over… Read More


Xilinx UltraScale gives you 25% more packing than you know who…

Xilinx UltraScale gives you 25% more packing than you know who…
by Luke Miller on 08-27-2014 at 11:30 pm

Coke with no ice. You see I am not cheap, or even frugal but a good steward. One of the things that I hate the most is waste. You know lights on in every room, door open during winter and driving 25 miles to save a dollar on gas.

One will notice fairly quickly that with Xilinx UltraScale 20nm FPGAs coupled with the new-fangled analytical … Read More


Silicon Measurement Data Gives Insights to Using Metal Fill With Inductors

Silicon Measurement Data Gives Insights to Using Metal Fill With Inductors
by Tom Simon on 08-27-2014 at 4:00 pm

Metal fill requirements for inductors are now a fact of life. Fill has long been seen as detrimental to device performance due to parasitic capacitance. The necessity of fill arises from the need to ensure planarization of dielectric layers by using chemical mechanical polishing. Without adequate fill, areas of the chip can suffer… Read More


Broadcom Internet of Things

Broadcom Internet of Things
by Paul McLellan on 08-27-2014 at 7:01 am

One of the perks of blogging here is being able to get a press invitation to lots of events, often in interesting locations I never even knew existed. Tonight it was a Broadcom event in SPUR here in San Francisco. The evening was about the Internet of Things (IoT). Everyone knows that IoT is sort of hype, but it is also a real opportunity.… Read More