Analog, mixed-signal, RF, and custom digital circuitry implemented in GHz nanometer CMOS introduce a new class of design and verification challenges that traditional transistor‑level simulators cannot adequately address. Berkeley Design Automation, Inc., (BDA) was founded in 2003 by Amit Mehrotra and Amit Narayan,… Read More



FinFET Modeling and Extraction at 16-nm
In 2012 FinFET is one of the most talked about MOS technologies of the year because traditional planar CMOS has slowed down on scaling below the 28nm node. To learn more about FinFET process modeling I attended a Synopsys webinar where Bari Biswas presented for about 42 minutes include a Q&A portion at the end.
Bari Biswas, Synopsys… Read More
Double Patterning Tutorial
Double patterning at 20nm is one of those big unavoidable changes that it is almost impossible to know too much about. Mentor’s David Abercrombie, DFM Program Manager for Calibre, has written a series of articles detailing the multifaceted impacts of double patterning on advanced node design and verification. There is… Read More
Apache/Ansys presents: 3DIC thermal, transmission lines, low frequency analysis
Late in January it is DesignCon at the Santa Clara convention center from January 28th-31st. Details are here.
On Tuesday from 11.05 to 11.45 Apache and Ansys will be presenting on Thermal Co-analysis of 3D IC/packages/system. This is being presented by a whole team of people: Stephen Pan, senior product specialist at ANSYS; Norman… Read More
TSMC 28nm and 20nm Update Q4 2012
The big news in Taiwan last week was another increase in TSMC capital expenditures to $9B in 2013. That number could grow however. Last year TSMC CAPEX was set at $6B and ended up at $8.3B due to rapid 28nm capacity expansion and an accelerated 20nm program. 2013 will be all about FinFETs and manufacturing Apple SoCs so $9B may not cover… Read More
Novocell team finishes record-breaking year with record number of new customers
In this pretty shaky NVM IP market, where articles frequently mention legal battles rather than product features, it seems interesting to take a look at this Newsletter from Novocell Semiconductor starting with these words: “As the Christmas carols and festive music floods the airwaves (and the shopping areas) here in western… Read More
Apache Presents: ESD analysis
The 26th Conference on VLSI Design will be in Pune, India from January 5th to 10th at the Hyatt Regency. Details on the conference here. Registration here. I happened to be involved in the first of these conferences, which was held in Edinburgh where I was wrapping up my PhD. It was in the considerably less palatial surroundings of … Read More
New HP Memristor Material Developments
At the recent NCCAVS Thin Film Users Group meeting in November, HP was on the program in the person of Joshua Yang who gave a materials centric look at the status of the HP ReRAM (Memristor) program. A colleague passed on the informative set of slides presented at the meeting. Being a former process integration team leader, I was immediately… Read More
A Comparison of SemiWiki and DeepChip
An email update from John Cooley at DeepChip this morning prompted the bloggers here at SemiWiki to continue the discussion and point out incorrect data, so that readers realize what is really happening with our media portals as sources of timely and relevant news and opinion. I respect what John Cooley has done with DeepChip over… Read More
Schematic Capture and SPICE from Symica
At DAC in June I first blogged about Symicabecause they offered a Fast SPICE circuit simulator, and today I discovered a free version so I decided to write up a mini-review for you.… Read More
Flynn Was Right: How a 2003 Warning Foretold Today’s Architectural Pivot