CAST Compression IP Webinar 800x100 (2)

Rise of the cloudphone?

Rise of the cloudphone?
by Don Dingee on 03-24-2014 at 3:00 pm

We’re all quite twitterpated with the smartphone. Admittedly, it has taken much of the world by storm, and dominates EDA discussion because of the complex SoCs inside. Feature phones have repeatedly been declared dead, or at least disinteresting, but the numbers tell a different story.

While Europe and the US enjoy much higher… Read More


IC Implementation Tool Gets a Rewrite, Now 10X Faster

IC Implementation Tool Gets a Rewrite, Now 10X Faster
by Daniel Payne on 03-24-2014 at 10:05 am

EDA start-up companies often have the advantage over established vendors by being able to start from scratch, instead of having to maintain some legacy code that no longer is competitive. But what happens when the established vendor decides to rewrite their IC implementation tools from scratch? In this case it’s good news,… Read More


How Students Can Attend DAC for Free

How Students Can Attend DAC for Free
by Daniel Payne on 03-23-2014 at 11:29 am

The annual Design Automation Conference (DAC) is a big deal and should be of interest to students considering a career in developing software to help automate some of the toughest design and verification challenges in SoC design. Maybe the cost of attending and traveling to DAC is an issue for you. The organizers of DAC are continuing… Read More


The CAD Team – Unsung Heroes in a Successful Tapeout

The CAD Team – Unsung Heroes in a Successful Tapeout
by Daniel Nenni on 03-23-2014 at 11:00 am

For most of my career, I worked as a CAD and design flow engineer. In the fall of 2012, I moved to a different role, as an applications and support manager at ClioSoft Inc. In my opinion, this was a very good opportunity for me to work with other CAD engineers and teams.

Having worked with different CAD teams in my career, I have often felt… Read More


Synchronizer Reliability Metrics

Synchronizer Reliability Metrics
by Daniel Nenni on 03-23-2014 at 10:00 am

As an example of the need for real-world reliability metrics, consider a modern automobile. We can already buy a car with parking assistance, collision avoidance, autonomous braking and adaptive cruise control features. These new features depend on video image processing that requires high-performance SoC components where… Read More


Top 10 Reasons to Use Vivado Design Suite

Top 10 Reasons to Use Vivado Design Suite
by Paul McLellan on 03-23-2014 at 7:05 am

Here are the top 10 reasons to use the Xilinx Vivado Design Suite to design your All Programmable Devices:

Reason number 10: Accelerate verification by over 100XThe Vivado Design Suite System Edition lets you do design at the C, C++ or systemC level. But a side-benefit is that you can use these languages for verification at performances… Read More


Mentor Acquires BDA!

Mentor Acquires BDA!
by Daniel Nenni on 03-23-2014 at 7:00 am

Mentor Graphics acquired Berkeley Design Automation this morning. The details of the deal were unannounced. This is a strong move by Mentor to challenge Cadence and Synopsys in the nanometer analog/mixed-signal market and nanometer memory characterization market, respectively. Mentor not only acquires the technology and… Read More


DAC: Automotive, IP and Security

DAC: Automotive, IP and Security
by Paul McLellan on 03-21-2014 at 5:18 pm

DAC is in the first week of June in San Francisco as I’m sure you already know if you are reading this. Historically DAC has focused on electronic design automation (EDA) and embedded software and systems (ESS). This year there are three new areas: automotive, Intellectual Property (IP) and security.

Automotive
Ever increasing… Read More


SEMI Breakfast Forums: the Internet of Things

SEMI Breakfast Forums: the Internet of Things
by Paul McLellan on 03-21-2014 at 4:29 pm

Coming up on April 10th is the SEMI Silicon Valley Breakfast Forum Internet of Things—Driving the Microelectronics Revolution. It runs from 7am to 10.45am and will be held at SEMI Headquarters which is at 3081 Zanker Road in San Jose.

Widespread adoption of the Internet of Things will take time, but the movement is advancing thanks… Read More


Evaluate MEMS Devices out-of-fab Before Fabrication

Evaluate MEMS Devices out-of-fab Before Fabrication
by Pawan Fangaria on 03-21-2014 at 10:30 am

MEMS design and fabrication is highly complex in the sense that the fabrication process heavily depends on the design, unlike IC fabrication which has a standard set of processes. A slight change in MEMS design can alter its fabrication steps to a large extent. For example, setting device parameters such as capacitance or linear… Read More