Primarius 2B

TSMC Theater Presentation: Apache

TSMC Theater Presentation: Apache
by Paul McLellan on 06-25-2012 at 12:13 am

At the TSMC Theater Apache (don’t forget, now a subsidary of Ansys) talked about Emerging Challenges for Power, Signal and Reliability Verification on 3D-IC and Silicon Interposer Designs. The more I see about the costs and challenges of 20/22nm and below, the more I think that these 3D and 2.5D approaches are going to be … Read More


Finding RTL Bugs Live Using Formal Techniques

Finding RTL Bugs Live Using Formal Techniques
by Daniel Payne on 06-24-2012 at 8:10 pm

Most of what you see at DAC is canned PowerPoint presentations, however on Tuesday afternoon I spotted a company called Oski Technology that was doing something almost unheard of – they had an engineer debugging a digital design from Nvidia using formal tools live. I later found out the engineer found 4 bugs in just three days… Read More


DesignSync update from Dassault Systems at DAC

DesignSync update from Dassault Systems at DAC
by Daniel Payne on 06-24-2012 at 8:10 pm

At DAC on Wednesday Rick Stanton of Dassault Systems gave me an update on what’s new with DesignSync, a design data management tool offered since 1998. Rick and I both worked at Viewlogic in the 90’s along with Dennis Harmon who then founded Synchronicity, later acquired by Dassault Systems.… Read More


Webinar: how to reduce mobile device cost and board space with LLI

Webinar: how to reduce mobile device cost and board space with LLI
by Eric Esteve on 06-24-2012 at 2:46 am

LLI Specification has been officially released by the MIPI Alliance, at the occasion of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, this year. As indicated by the name, the round-trip latency of the LLI inter-chip connection is fast enough for a mobile phone modem to share an application processor’s memory while maintaining… Read More


Designing a Wafer-Scale Image Sensor for use in X-Rays

Designing a Wafer-Scale Image Sensor for use in X-Rays
by Daniel Payne on 06-22-2012 at 1:32 pm

At Intel we mused about designing wafer-scale integration (WSI) back in the 70’s however I just learned about how Dr.Renato Turchetta at the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) designed a wafer-scale imaging sensor chip for X-Ray applications. I was also able to interview Dr. Turchetta to learn more about… Read More


Will Microsoft Go Thermonuclear?

Will Microsoft Go Thermonuclear?
by Ed McKernan on 06-21-2012 at 8:20 pm

Microsoft is in trouble. Many of you already know that. Steve Ballmer has one last opportunity to set the company on a growth path or they will retreat into IBM legacy mode… ala the post 1990s Lou Gerstner era. And so they introduce a large tablet-convertible in direct competition with their PC partners Dell and HP. The End Game is coming… Read More


EDA Tools to Optimize Memory Design

EDA Tools to Optimize Memory Design
by Daniel Payne on 06-21-2012 at 8:15 pm

I met with Amit Gupta, President and CEO of Solido at DAC on Tuesday to get an update on their EDA tools used in the design of memory, standard cells and low-power. In 2012 they’ve expanded to add three new software packages: Memory, Standard Cell, Low Power. They must be doing something right because at DAC this year I see more… Read More