Those who have read the numerous articles I have written about MIPI, or PCIe, or the fusion of both named “Mobile Express” know my position: the question is not “Will Mobile devices support PCI Express?” but “When will we see Mobile devices integrating Mobile Express?” I was not really surprised by the Press Release that Cadence … Read More
CEO Interview with Dave Kelf, CEO of Breker Verification SystemsIn the functional verification space, Breker Verification Systems stands…Read More
RISC-V: From Niche Architecture to Strategic FoundationAt the recent RISC-V Now by Andes conference,…Read More
Bringing mathematical rigour in the world of hardware - a journey into Formal VerificationThis interview presents the first steps of Robert…Read More
The Great Divide: A Tale of Three Hardware Emulation ArchitecturesHardware emulation arose as a necessity out of…Read More
A Different Angle on Co-Simulation for SystemsCo-simulation, two or more simulations running concurrently in…Read MoreFormal Verification of Power Intent
I can’t imagine that any SoC today is designed without taking intense interest in how much power the chip will consume, whether it is destined for a mobile phone or tethered in a cloud datacenter. One challenge with power is that adding features like voltage islands or power-down areas require changes to the netlist such as… Read More
Margaret Butler: One Woman’s Life in Science
46 years in Computing, 1945-1991
Margaret (Kampschaefer) Butler was a pioneer in technology, a ground-breaking woman who graduated with a B.S in Mathematics and Statistics in 1944, and followed a fascinating career path in the public sector starting in the earliest days of computers and nuclear energy. One of the early female… Read More
Standard Cell Library Characterization
Standard cell library characterization has been around for decades, Synopsys has been offering Liberty NCXand Cadence has Virtuoso Foundation IP Characterization. What’s new is that Mentor Graphics acquired the Z Circuit technology for library characterization and has integrated it with the Eldo Classic circuit … Read More
Ensuring timing of Custom Designs with large embedded memories – A big burden has solution!
In 1990s when designs were small, I was seeing design and EDA community struggling to improve upon huge time taken to verify the circuits, specifically with Spice and the like. I was myself working on developing tool for transistor level static timing analysis (STA) mainly to gain on time (eliminating the need of exhaustive set … Read More
EDPS Monterey. Agenda Now Available
For 20 years there has been the Electronic Design Process Symposium. It has been held each April and for the last few years at least has always been in Monterey at the Monterey Beach Resort. This year it is Thursday and Friday April 18th/19th.
The keynote on the first day is by Ivo Bolsens of Xilinx on The All-programmable SoC —… Read More
RTDA at Altera
I talked to Yaron Kretchmer of Altera to find out how they are using RTDA’s products. I believe that Altera are the oldest customer of RTDA, dating back over 15 years, originally used by the operations team around the test floor before propagating out in the EDA and software worlds more recently.
Altera use two RTDA tools, LicenceMonitor… Read More
Samsung and the New World Order!
The keynotes at CDNLive today were very interesting, but rather than cover the slides and bullet points let me share with you my personal view of Samsung and how they are changing the semiconductor industry. Before I continue remember I’m just a blogger who shares observations, experiences, and opinions. This blog is for entertainment… Read More
Virtual Platforms, Acceleration, Emulation, FPGA Prototypes, Chips
At CDNLive today Frank Schirrmeister presented a nice overview of Cadence’s verification capabilities. The problem with verification is that you can’t have everything you want. What you really want is very fast runtimes, very accurate fidelity to the hardware and everything available very early in the design … Read More
Visually Debugging IC Designs for AMS and Mixed-Languages
With an HDL-based design methodology many IC engineers code in text languages like SystemVerilog and VHDL, so it’s only natural to use a text-based debug methodology. The expression that, “A picture is worth a thousand words” comes to my mind and in this case a visual debug approach is worth considering for … Read More


The Semiconductor Growth Numbers are Insane but the Real World Doesn’t Tally!