There is a famous quote (probably attributed to Mark Twain who gets them all by default) “When looking for faults use a mirror not a spyglass.” Of course if you have RTL of your IP or your design then using a SpyGlass is clearly the better way to go. But it is getting even better since there is a new enhanced release, SpyGlass… Read More



Smart mobile SoCs: NVIDIA
When the name synonymous with personal computer graphics decided to turn their engineering talent toward the mobile business, heads turned. NVIDIA has rather quickly gained a foothold in tablets by squeezing four high performance processing cores, twelve graphics cores, and more onto a Tegra 3.… Read More
Carl Icahn Blinks in Bid for Mentor Graphics
One year ago activist investor Carl Icahn started a hostile takeover bid for Mentor Graphics and was able to offer up three new board members, however yesterday we read that Mentor Graphics will:
- Have their annual shareholder meeting on May 30th
- Two of Icahn’s board members are not on the roster for renewal
- Mr. Icahn has no
IC design at 20nm with TSMC and Synopsys
While the debate rages on about 28nm yield at foundry juggernaut TSMC, on Monday I attended a webinar on 20nm IC design hosted by TSMC and Synopsys. Double Patterning Technology (DPT) becomes a requirement for several layers of your 20nm IC design which then impact many of your EDA tools and methodology.… Read More
ARM Models: Carbon Inside
ARM used to build their own models. By hand. They had an instruction-set simulator (ISS) called ARMulator that was largely intended for software development, and cycle-accurate models that were intended to run within digital simulators for development of the hardware of ARM-based systems.
There were two problems with this … Read More
RedHawk: On to the Future
For many, maybe most, big designs, Apache’s RedHawk is the signoff tool for analyzing issues around power: electromigration, power supply droop, noise, transients and so on. But the latest designs have some issues: they are enormous (so you can’t just analyze them naively any more than you can run a Spice simulation… Read More
Book Review – Quantum Physics: A Beginner’s Guide
It’s been 34 years since I graduated from the University of Minnesota with a degree in Electrical Engineering so I was curious about what has changed in quantum physics since then. Alastair Rae is the UK-based author who wrote the book – Quantum Physics: A Beginner’s Guide. I read this on my Kindle Touch e-book… Read More
Such a small piece of Silicon, so strategic PHY IP
How could I talk about the various Interface protocols (PCIe, USB, MIPI, DDRn…) from an IP perspective and miss the PHY IP! Especially these days, where the PHY IP market has been seriously shaken, as we will see in this post, and will probably continue to be shaken… but we will have to wait and look at the M&A news during the next … Read More
GSA 3DIC and Cadence
At the GSA 3D IC working group meeting, Cadence presented their perspective on 3D ICs. Their view will turn out to be important since the new chair of the 3D IC working group is going to be Ken Potts of Cadence. Once GSA decided the position could not be funded then an independent consultant like Herb Reiter had to bow out and the position… Read More
Smart mobile SoCs: Apple
Apple sells devices. Lots of them. Their success is due to many things related to design and tech religion, and an important part is the SoC inside those devices which creates the experience people want. The official Apple information on their parts is minimal. Their SoCs have been dissected with more fervor than Roswell aliens.… Read More
Flynn Was Right: How a 2003 Warning Foretold Today’s Architectural Pivot