Ceva webinar AI Arch SEMI 800X100 250625

Debugging Subtle Cache Problems

Debugging Subtle Cache Problems
by Paul McLellan on 08-22-2012 at 5:11 pm

When I worked for virtual platform companies, one of the things that I used to tell prospective customers was that virtual prototypes were not some second-rate approach to software and hardware development to be dropped the moment real silicon was available, that in many ways they were better than the real hardware since they had… Read More


Synopsys up to $1.75B

Synopsys up to $1.75B
by Paul McLellan on 08-22-2012 at 4:24 pm

Synopsys announced their results today. With Magma rolled in (but not yet SpringSoft since that hasn’t technically closed) they had revenue of $443M up 15% from $387M last year. This means that they are all but a $1.75B company and a large part of the entire EDA industry (which I think of as being $5B or so, depending on just what… Read More


Cadence at 20nm

Cadence at 20nm
by Paul McLellan on 08-21-2012 at 8:10 pm

Cadence has a new white paper out about the changes in IC design that are coming at 20nm. One thing is very clear: 20nm is not simply “more of the same”. All design, from basic standard cells up to huge SoCs has several new challenges to go along with all the old ones that we had at 45nm and 28nm.

I should emphasize that the paper… Read More


A Brief History of ASIC, part I

A Brief History of ASIC, part I
by Paul McLellan on 08-21-2012 at 7:00 pm

In the early 1980s the ideas and infrastructure for what would eventually be called ASIC started to come together. Semiconductor technology had reached the point that a useful number of transistors could be put onto a chip. But unlike earlier, when a chip only held a few transistors and thus could be used to create basic generic building… Read More


A Brief History of Mentor Graphics

A Brief History of Mentor Graphics
by Beth Martin on 08-20-2012 at 11:00 pm

In 1981, Pac-Man was sweeping the nation, the first space shuttle launched, and a small group of engineers in Oregon started not only a new company (Mentor Graphics), but an entirely new industry, electronic design automation (EDA).


Mentor founders Tom Bruggere, Gerry Langeler, and Dave Moffenbeier left Tektronix with a great… Read More


The Business Case for Algorithmic Memories

The Business Case for Algorithmic Memories
by Adam Kablanian on 08-20-2012 at 11:00 am

Economic considerations are a primary driver in determining which technology solutions will be selected, and how they will be implemented in a company’s design environment. In the process of developing Memoir’s Algorithmic Memory technology and our Renaissance product line, we have held fast to two basic premises: Our technology… Read More


MemCon 2012: Cadence and Denali

MemCon 2012: Cadence and Denali
by Eric Esteve on 08-20-2012 at 7:00 am

I was very happy to see that Cadence has decided to hold MEMCON again in 2012, in Santa Clara on September 18[SUP]th[/SUP] . The session will start with “New Memory Technologies and Disruptions in the Ecosystem”from Martin Lund.

Martin is the recently (March this year) appointed Senior VP for the SoC Realization Group at cadence:… Read More


A Brief History of SoCs

A Brief History of SoCs
by Daniel Nenni on 08-19-2012 at 10:00 am

Interesting to note; our cell phones today have more computing power than NASA had for the first landing on the moon. The insides of these mobile devices that we can’t live without are not like personal computers or even laptops with a traditional CPU (central processing unit) and a dozen other support chips. The brain, heart, and… Read More


Ex ante: disclose IP before, not after standardization

Ex ante: disclose IP before, not after standardization
by Don Dingee on 08-17-2012 at 3:46 pm

Many of the audience here are involved in standards bodies and specification development, so the news from the Apple v. Samsung on the invocation of ex ante in today’s testimony is useful.

I worked with VITA, the folks behind the VME family of board-level embedded technology, on their ex ante policy several years ago, and … Read More


I/O Bandwidth with Tensilica Cores

I/O Bandwidth with Tensilica Cores
by Paul McLellan on 08-17-2012 at 3:00 pm

It is obviously a truism that somewhere in an SoC there is something limiting a further increase in performance. One area where this is especially noticeable is when a Tensilica core is used to create a highly optimized processor for some purpose. The core performance may be boosted by a factor of 10 or even as much as 100. Once the core… Read More