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RTDA at Altera

RTDA at Altera
by Paul McLellan on 03-12-2013 at 8:05 pm

I talked to Yaron Kretchmer of Altera to find out how they are using RTDA’s products. I believe that Altera are the oldest customer of RTDA, dating back over 15 years, originally used by the operations team around the test floor before propagating out in the EDA and software worlds more recently.

Altera use two RTDA tools, LicenceMonitorRead More


Samsung and the New World Order!

Samsung and the New World Order!
by Daniel Nenni on 03-12-2013 at 7:52 pm

The keynotes at CDNLive today were very interesting, but rather than cover the slides and bullet points let me share with you my personal view of Samsung and how they are changing the semiconductor industry. Before I continue remember I’m just a blogger who shares observations, experiences, and opinions. This blog is for entertainment… Read More


Virtual Platforms, Acceleration, Emulation, FPGA Prototypes, Chips

Virtual Platforms, Acceleration, Emulation, FPGA Prototypes, Chips
by Paul McLellan on 03-12-2013 at 7:13 pm

At CDNLive today Frank Schirrmeister presented a nice overview of Cadence’s verification capabilities. The problem with verification is that you can’t have everything you want. What you really want is very fast runtimes, very accurate fidelity to the hardware and everything available very early in the design … Read More


Visually Debugging IC Designs for AMS and Mixed-Languages

Visually Debugging IC Designs for AMS and Mixed-Languages
by Daniel Payne on 03-12-2013 at 4:18 pm

With an HDL-based design methodology many IC engineers code in text languages like SystemVerilog and VHDL, so it’s only natural to use a text-based debug methodology. The expression that, “A picture is worth a thousand words” comes to my mind and in this case a visual debug approach is worth considering for … Read More


Cadence To Acquire Tensilica

Cadence To Acquire Tensilica
by Paul McLellan on 03-11-2013 at 5:54 pm

You have probably already seen the news: Cadence is acquiring Tensilica for $380M. Cadence has been relatively late to the IP party compared to Synopsys. In contrast, Mentor was early, got into the IP business before it was really profitable and ended up shutting down the business.

Tensilica is quite sizable. It has over 200 licensees,… Read More


Sanjiv Kaul: Is HLS About to Take Off?

Sanjiv Kaul: Is HLS About to Take Off?
by Paul McLellan on 03-10-2013 at 8:10 pm


At the end of last week I talked to Sanjiv Kaul, the new CEO of Calypto. Just to give a little background for those that haven’t been following along at home, Calypto was founded to try and solve the very hard problem of sequential logical equivalence checking (mostly by people from the engineering team that I managed at Ambit).… Read More


A Brief History of the Foundry Industry, part 2

A Brief History of the Foundry Industry, part 2
by Paul McLellan on 03-10-2013 at 8:05 pm

Part 1 here.

The line between fabless semiconductor companies and IDMs has blurred over the last decade. Back in the 1990s, most IDMs manufactured most of their own product, perhaps using a foundry for a small percentage of additional capacity when required. But their own manufacturing was competitive, both in terms of the capacity… Read More


We are Live at CDNLive 2013!

We are Live at CDNLive 2013!
by Daniel Nenni on 03-10-2013 at 7:00 pm

Dr. Paul McLellan and I will be covering CDNLive this week, one of the premier EDA events of the year. Take a look at the agenda and exhibits, this year it looks like a full on Design Automation Conference! There is definitely something for everyone!

Get ready for two full days of content with more than a hundred tracks and keynotes by… Read More


Reliability is the New Power

Reliability is the New Power
by Paul McLellan on 03-09-2013 at 9:56 am

It has be come a cliche to say that “power is the new timing”, the thing that keeps designers up at night and drives the major architectural decisions in big SoCs. Nobody is saying it yet but perhaps “reliability is the new power” will be tomorrow’s received wisdom.

I talked to Adrian Evans of IROCTech… Read More


Qualcomm and Intel Dynasty Scenario at 14nm

Qualcomm and Intel Dynasty Scenario at 14nm
by Ed McKernan on 03-08-2013 at 1:00 pm

At a different time, but certainly within the past 12 months, Paul Otellini was asked if Intel would be a Foundry for Qualcomm. His reply was that it did not leave a good taste in his mouth. Nevertheless it was not rejected and the door that remained open just a crack is likely to swing open for Qualcomm, the premier mobile silicon supplier… Read More