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Low power techniques

Low power techniques
by Paul McLellan on 12-08-2011 at 5:49 pm

There was recently a forum discussion about the best low power techniques. Not surprisingly we didn’t come up with a new technique nobody had ever thought of but it was an interesting discussion.

First there are the techniques that by now have become standard. If anyone wants more details on these then two good resources are… Read More


Driving in the bus lane

Driving in the bus lane
by Paul McLellan on 12-08-2011 at 1:16 pm

Modern microprocessor and memory designs often have hundreds of datapaths that traverse the width of the chip, many of them very wide (over one thousand signals). To meet signal timing and slope targets for these buses, designers must insert repeater cells to improve the speed of the signal. Until now, the operations associated… Read More


Improving Analog/Mixed Signal Circuit Reliability at Advanced Nodes

Improving Analog/Mixed Signal Circuit Reliability at Advanced Nodes
by glforte on 12-07-2011 at 3:52 pm

Preventing electrical circuit failure is a growing concern for IC designers today. Certain types of failures such as electrostatic discharge (ESD) events, have well established best practices and design rules that circuit designers should be following. Other issues have emerged more recently, such as how to check circuits… Read More


How Fast (and accurate) is Your SPICE Circuit Simulator?

How Fast (and accurate) is Your SPICE Circuit Simulator?
by Daniel Payne on 12-06-2011 at 6:17 pm

In my dad’s generation they tweaked cars to become hotrods while in EDA today we have companies that tweak SPICE circuit simulators to become crowned speed champions. The perennial question though is, “How fast and accurate is my SPICE circuit simulator?”… Read More


Methodics can Now use www.methodics.com after Domain Name Battle in EDA

Methodics can Now use www.methodics.com after Domain Name Battle in EDA
by Daniel Payne on 12-06-2011 at 5:36 pm

Imagine trying to run your EDA business only to have a competitor squat on your domain name and then make disparaging remarks about you. This sounds like a match made for reality TV however it is quite real, and now this chapter in EDA has a happy ending because Methodics can use www.methodics.com as their domain name.


The Bad Guy
We’ve… Read More


EDA mergers: Accelicon acquired by Agilent

EDA mergers: Accelicon acquired by Agilent
by Daniel Payne on 12-06-2011 at 4:51 pm

Agilent acquired EEsof back in 1999, now the EEsof group acquired Accelicon on December 1, 2011. The terms of the deal are not disclosed.

SPICE circuit simulators are only as accurate as their models and algorithms. On the model side we have Accelicon that provides EDA tools to create SPICE models based on silicon measurements:… Read More


Mark Milligan joins Springsoft

Mark Milligan joins Springsoft
by Paul McLellan on 12-06-2011 at 2:01 pm

Mark Milligan recently joined SpringSoft as VP Corporate Marketing. I sat down with him on Monday to get his perspective on things.

He started life, as so many of us, as an engineer. He was an ASIC designer working on low-level microcode for the Navy Standard Airborne Computer at Control Data. It was actually the first ASIC that they… Read More


Nvidia’s Chris Malachowsky on "Watt’s next"

Nvidia’s Chris Malachowsky on "Watt’s next"
by Paul McLellan on 12-06-2011 at 12:31 pm

The video and slides of the CEDA lunch from a month or two ago are now (finally) up here. Chris Malachowsky presented “Watt’s next.” Chris is one of the founders of nVidia and is currently its senior VP of research. He started by talking a bit about the nVidia product line but moved on to talking about supercomputers… Read More


HSPICE – I Didn’t Know That About IC Circuit Simulation

HSPICE – I Didn’t Know That About IC Circuit Simulation
by Daniel Payne on 12-05-2011 at 11:14 am

HSPICE is over 30 years old, which is a testimony of how solid the circuit simulator has been and how widely used it is. To stay competitive the HSPICE developers have to innovate or the product will slowly loose ground to the many other simulator choices. I listened to the webinar last week to find out what was new with HSPICE.

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