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Mounir Hahad Rejoins Silvaco

Mounir Hahad Rejoins Silvaco
by admin on 02-20-2014 at 4:16 pm

Mounir Hahad just joined Silvaco as VP engineering. And when I say joined I really mean rejoined. I had a call with him to find out how that happened.

Mounir studied in France for a PhD in computer science on numerical computing. In 1995 the then-director of TCAD at Silvaco called him up having read some of his published papers. Silvaco… Read More


Before SPICE Circuit Simulation Comes TCAD Tools

Before SPICE Circuit Simulation Comes TCAD Tools
by Daniel Payne on 02-20-2014 at 3:19 pm

I’ve run SPICE circuit simulators since the 1970’s and they use transistor models where the device parameters are provided by the foundry. These transistor and interconnect parameters come from an engineer at the foundry who has characterized silicon with actual measurements or by running a TCAD (Technology CAD)… Read More


ISSCC: Analog-Digital Converter in FD-SOI

ISSCC: Analog-Digital Converter in FD-SOI
by Paul McLellan on 02-20-2014 at 11:50 am

The International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) was last week in San Francisco. Stéphane Le Tual, Pratap Narayan Singh, Christophe Curis, Pierre Dautriche, all from STMicroelectronics presented a paper on A 20GHz-BW 6b 10GS/s 32mW Time-Interleaved SAR ADC with Master T&H in 28nm UTBB FDSOI TechnologyRead More


$1 Billion IP & VIP sales by 2017?

$1 Billion IP & VIP sales by 2017?
by Eric Esteve on 02-20-2014 at 9:58 am

We are not talking about ARM Ltd., as the IP vendor has already passed the $1B sales in 2013. In fact, we are not talking about a single IP vendor; this $1B mark will be passed by two IP market segments: Interface and Verification IP. In fact these two segments are very close together. When an IP is developed to support a specific Interface… Read More


Synopsys Acquires Coverity

Synopsys Acquires Coverity
by Paul McLellan on 02-19-2014 at 5:27 pm

Synopsys announced this afternoon that they are acquiring Coverity for $375M subject to all the usual reviews.

There are a couple of other big EDA connections. Aki Fujimora, who was CTO of Cadence, is on the board. And Adreas Kuehlmann is the VP of R&D. He used to run Cadence Berkeley Laboratories before moving to the other end… Read More


One SPIE session not to miss

One SPIE session not to miss
by Beth Martin on 02-19-2014 at 4:19 pm

The time is nigh for another meeting of the practitioners of the lithographic arts, dark and otherwise, at the SPIE Advanced Lithography symposium.

I love this conference for the engagement you see, both in the sessions and in the hallways. People actually meet and talk and argue. There’s always interesting gossip, exciting technologies,… Read More


Xilinx: Delivering a Generation Ahead

Xilinx: Delivering a Generation Ahead
by Paul McLellan on 02-19-2014 at 4:15 pm

Last week was Xilinx’s investor day. Xilinx believe they are now a process generation ahead. They did over $100M in 28nm designs in FY2013 (Xilinx FY ended March 2013) and did over over $100M in Q4 2013 calendar year alone (and this is almost all true production volume, with only about 5% prototypes) with a plan greater than … Read More


Brian Krzanich Does Reddit AMA

Brian Krzanich Does Reddit AMA
by Paul McLellan on 02-19-2014 at 1:03 pm

Do you know what an AMA is on Reddit? It stands for “ask me anything”. A person, often a famous person like Bill Gates (last week) but sometimes just someone who does an interesting job (like astronaut) or was in an interesting situation (like the hijack from Ethiopia last week).

Today, it is someone who argualble is all… Read More


Carbon Design Systems – Secret of Success

Carbon Design Systems – Secret of Success
by Pawan Fangaria on 02-19-2014 at 11:00 am


Last week, after learning from the press releaseof Carbonabout its rocking sustained growth with record-breaking revenue and a thumping 46% increase in bookings, I was interested to know some more details about what drives Carbon to such an amazing performance in an EDA market that is generally prone to growth of a few percentage… Read More


Verifying DRC Decks and Design Rule Specifications

Verifying DRC Decks and Design Rule Specifications
by Daniel Nenni on 02-19-2014 at 8:00 am

DRVerify is part of the iDRM design rule compiler platform from Sage DA, something that I have been personally involved with for the past three years. DRVerify is mainly used to verify third party design rule check (DRC) decks and ensure that they correctly, completely and accurately represent the design rule specification. In… Read More