Primarius 2B

How many languages an Engineer should speak?

How many languages an Engineer should speak?
by ahmed.shahein on 06-08-2012 at 9:37 am

I speak VHDL and SystemC, others speak Verilog and SystemVerilog … what do you speak?

Before getting into the core of the topic let me give you some round figures, engineers love numbers. Julian Lonsdale “European Sales Manager at Aldec” informed me at the Xfest Munich last month that Aldec carried out a survey to evaluate the usage… Read More


President Obama at DAC 2012

President Obama at DAC 2012
by Daniel Nenni on 06-07-2012 at 7:45 pm


Okay, President Obama didn’t actually stop at DAC but he did do a drive by. I happened to be stepping out for some much needed fresh air and there goes his speeding motorcade. It was quite a sight actually, with all of the motorcycles, SUVs, a SWAT vehicle and even a paramedic rig (my son the Fireman drives one of those). The president … Read More


Partitioning Panel

Partitioning Panel
by Paul McLellan on 06-06-2012 at 4:53 pm

I moderated a panel on partitioning today and I have to say that I learned some things. The panelists were Jonathan DeMent from IBM, Santosh Santosh from NVIDIA and Hao Nham of eSilicon. Considering the different types of designs being done their approach to partitioning and the reasons for doing so were very similar.

When you first… Read More


Collaboration at 28nm, 20nm and 14nm

Collaboration at 28nm, 20nm and 14nm
by Daniel Payne on 06-06-2012 at 11:23 am


Wednesday morning I attended a panel discussion with: ARM, IBM, Cadence, GLOBALFOUNDRIES and Samsung.

The panelists all sang the same song of collaboration between EDA, IP and Foundry to enable 28nm, 20nm and even 14nm.… Read More


Belle Wei Receives Marie Pistilli Award and is Interviewed

Belle Wei Receives Marie Pistilli Award and is Interviewed
by Paul McLellan on 06-04-2012 at 7:36 pm

Today at DAC Belle Wei received the Marie Pistilli Award, presented to her by Patrick Groeneveld the DAC chair (and flowers from DAC via Chi-Foon Chan, now co-ceo of Synopsys). She was then interviewed by Daya Nadamuni.

Her father was a military general in China and in 1949 in the revolution her family fled to Taiwan where she was born.… Read More


Virtual Platforms plus FPGA Prototyping, the Perfect Mix

Virtual Platforms plus FPGA Prototyping, the Perfect Mix
by Paul McLellan on 06-03-2012 at 8:59 pm

There are two main approaches to building a substructure on which to do software development and architectural analysis before a chip is ready: virtual platforms and FPGA prototyping.

Virtual platforms have the advantage that they are fairly quick to produce and can be created a long time before RTL design for the various blocks… Read More


Understanding and Designing For Variation in GLOBALFOUNDRIES 28nm

Understanding and Designing For Variation in GLOBALFOUNDRIES 28nm
by Daniel Nenni on 06-03-2012 at 8:30 pm

On Wednesday there is a User Track Poster Session that examines the design impact of process variation in GLOBALFOUNDRIES 28nm technology. For those of you who are wondering what process variation looks like at 20nm take this 28nm example and multiply it by one hundred (slight exaggeration, maybe).

Variation effects have a significant… Read More


Industry Standard FinFET versus Intel Tri-Gate!

Industry Standard FinFET versus Intel Tri-Gate!
by Daniel Nenni on 06-03-2012 at 6:00 pm

Ever since the “Intel Reinvents Transistors Using New 3-D Structure” PR campaign I have been at odds with them. As technologists, I have nothing but respect for Intel. The Intel PR department, however, quite frankly, is evil. Correct me if I’m wrong here but Intel did not “reinvent” the transistor. Nor did they come up with the name… Read More