There were a handful of EDA vendors at DAC this year touting tools for IC variability analysis. On Tuesday I met with Firas Mohamed, CEO and President of Infiniscale.… Read More





A New STA Tool at DAC, No Not Cadence
The big EDA companies get big attention at DAC, however sometimes the little EDA start-ups like Arcadia Innovationhave a new product that can be overlooked. On Tuesday at DAC I met with Joey Lin, founder of Arcadia Innovation and learned about his new STA (Static Timing Analysis) tool called TimeHawk .… Read More
Physical IP Update at DAC
Last year at DAC I visited this little-known physical IP company called DXCorr, so I decided to visit them again this year and get an update.… Read More
Deploying 14nm FinFETs in your Next Mobile SoC
At DAC in Austin a design company, foundry and EDA vendor teamed up to present their experiences with 14nm FinFETs during a breakfast on Tuesday.
Panelists included:
- Ed Sperling, Semi Mfg and Design
- Anil Jain, Cavium
- Subramani Kengeri, GLOBALFOUNDRIES
- Kelvin Low, GLOBALFOUNDRIES
- Raymond Leung, Synopsys
- Bari Biswas, Synopsys
Is Your Synchronizer Doing its Job (Part 1)?
Recently, I discussed the increasing risk of metastability hazards at nanoscale geometries. These risks are significantly aggravated at low supply voltages and low temperatures and must be addressed during the design cycle of any mission critical application. This time I discuss what it takes to estimate a synchronizer’s … Read More
Derivative Designs Need Tools Too
Increasingly, SoC designs consist of assembling blocks of pre-designed IP. One special case is the derivative design where not just the IP blocks get re-used but a lot of the assembly itself. For example, in the design below some blocks are added, some blocks are updated, some hierarchy is changed. But the bulk of the design remains… Read More
Increasing Automotive Semiconductor Test Quality
The growing amount of electronics within today’s automobiles is driving very high quality and reliability requirements to a widening range of semiconductor devices. At the same time, traditional fault models are becoming less effective at achieving desired silicon quality levels. Improvements in test solutions are needed… Read More
Formality Ultra, Streamline Your ECOs
One of the most challenging stages in an SoC design is achieving timing closure. Actually design closure is perhaps a better term since everything needs to come together such as clock tree, power nets, power budget and so on. Changes made to the design are known as ECOs (which stands for engineering change orders, a term that comes… Read More
Taiwan Semiconductor Tries To Pull A FinFAST One!
This completely misleading title is from a Seeking Alpha (SA) article, a stock investment version of the National Enquirer. As I mentioned inA Call to ARMs, fame and fortune seeking SA Authors make a penny per click so sensationalism sells. The article is not worth your time so I will save you the click and skip to the misguided conclusion:… Read More
Should You Buy All Aspects of Your IP From a Single Supplier?
Interface IP typically consists of multiple layers, most importantly a PHY (level 1) analog (or mixed signal) block that handles the interface to the outside world and a number of levels of digital controllers. The interfaces between all these levels, especially between the PHY and the controller, is often defined by the interface… Read More
Facing the Quantum Nature of EUV Lithography