Last year I was surprised at DAC by an un-heard of EDA company from China, ICScape. This year I followed up and spoke with Ravi Ravikumar about what’s new with ICScape in 2013.… Read More




Validating Hard IP & Std Cell Libraries at DAC
The building blocks for every SoC are standard cell libraries that are assembled, designed and verified together. But how do we really know if all the data formats used during design are correct and consistent? To answer that question I spoke with Johan Peetersof Fractal Technologiesat DAC.
Johan Peeters, Rene Donkers
… Read More
A 3D Field Solver for Parasitic Extraction Thermal ESD Analysis
The smaller the process node the more necessary it is that you extract accurate parasitics from interconnect and 3D structures in order to analyze timing, thermal effects and ESD compliance. Silicon Frontlinehas EDA tools in all three of these categories, so I met with Dermott Lynchat DAC to get an annual update.
Dermott Lynch,… Read More
Dan Niles: Everything Changed on May 22nd
I listened to Dan Niles’s quarterly report that he does for GSA. He had a lot of the usual background data on savings rates and GDP growth, but the big story is that everything changed on May 22nd and that this will turn out to be a very significant moment. That was the day that the Fed basically announced that it would start to “taper”… Read More
Aart: Technomic Push-Pull
Aart de Geus gave one of the visionary look to the next 50 years of EDA as a warmup to Stephen Wu’s keynote. EDA is enabling the greatest push-pull ever, part of an exponential change on a scale never before seen.
Technologies seem to go through a 50 year technical push phase (driven by improving the technology) followed by a 50… Read More
What is inside the iPhone5s? Samsung or TSMC?
As a semiconductor professional and an Apple customer I’m very interested to see what is inside the iPhone5s. Rumors are spreading, photos are leaking, creating a nice build up to the next release of the mobile device that changed the world.
Honestly, last year I was a bit disappointed with the iPhone5. Inside is the A6 SoC which uses… Read More
An EDA update from Dassault Systemes at DAC
I first met Michael Munseyback at Viewlogic in the 1990’s, so was pleased to meet with him at DACand get an update on what Dassault Systemes has to offer the EDA world.
Michael Munsey, Dassault Systemes
SPICE update from ProPlus at DAC
With EDA tool development in San Jose, Beijing and China, ProPlusis probably best known for their device modeling software called BSIMProPlus. At DAC I met with Lianfeng Yang, Ph.D. the VP of Marketing to hear about what’s new.
Lianfeng Yeng, ProPlus
… Read More
Circuit Simulation update from Cadence at DAC
I’m keenly interested in SPICE circuit simulators, so at DACI met with John Piercefrom Cadence to get an update on what’s new this year.
John Pierce, Cadence
… Read More
MIPS Warrior Goes Into Battle
You are probably aware that Imagination Technologies, perhaps most well known for creating the GPU that is in the iPhone and iPad, acquired MIPS, which was originally a spinout from Silicon Graphics and licenses a line of general purpose microprocessors.
MIPS considers that they have a purer implementation of the RISC philosophy… Read More
Memory Innovation at the Edge: Power Efficiency Meets Green Manufacturing