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I read about how Toumaz used the Analog Fast SPICE (AFS) tool from BDA and it sounded interesting so I setup a Skype call with Alan Wong in the UK last month to find out how they design their ultra low-power IC chips.
Interview
Q: Tell me about your IC design background.
A: I’ve been at Toumaz almost 8 years now and before that at Sony… Read More
SuperSpeed USB specification was released in November 2008! Even if we can see USB 3.0 powered peripherals shipping now, essentially external HDD, connected to PC equipped with Host Bus Adaptors (as PC chipset from Intel or AMD were not supporting USB 3.0), it will take up to the second quarter of 2012 before PC will be shipped with… Read More
If you ask design groups what the biggest challenges are to getting a chip out on time, then the top two are usually verification, and getting closure after physical design. Not just timing closure, but power and area. One of the big drivers of this is predicting and avoiding excessive routing congestion, which is something that … Read More
With the introduction of the Kindle Fire, it is now guaranteed that Amazon has the formula down for building the new, high volume mobile platform based on sub $9 processors. In measured fashion, Amazon has moved down Moore’s Law curve from the initial 90nm Freescale processor to what is reported to be TI’s OMAP 4 in order to add the … Read More
I spent Thursday Sept. 22 at the first nanometer Circuit Verification Forum, held at TechMart in Santa Clara. Hosted by Berkeley Design Automation (BDA), the forum was attended by 100+ people, with circuit designers dominating. I spoke with many attendees. They were seeking solutions to the hugely challenging problems they … Read More
Verdi is very widely used in verification groups, perhaps the industry’s most popular debug system. But users have not been able to access the Verdi environment to write their own scripts or applications. This means either that they are prevented from doing something that they want to do, or else the barrier for doing it is… Read More
Investing with Cramer is a crap shoot. By Cramer, I mean the Mad Money TV show, and Action Alerts PLUS from thestreet.com. Cramer is certainly a smart guy and knows his stuff, but don’t think following his investment strategy is necessarily a winner. He constantly maintains that you can beat the averages by picking individual… Read More
Memory designers need to predict the timing, current and power of their designs with high accuracy before tape-out to ensure that all the design goals will be met. Extracting the parasitic values from the IC layout and then running circuit simulation is a trusted methodology however the accuracy of the results ultimately depend… Read More
Way back in 1999 the open SystemC initiative (OSCI) was launched. In 2005 the IEEE standard for SystemC (IEEE1666-2005 if you are counting) was approved. In 2008, TLM 2.0 was standardized (transactional level models), making building virtual platforms using SystemC models easier. At least the models should be play nicely together,… Read More
Stephen Crosher started up Moortec in the UK back in 2005 with the help of his former Zarlink co-workers and they set to work offering AMS design services and eventually created their own Analog IP like the temperature sensor shown below:
We spoke by phone last week about his start-up experience and how they approach AMS design.… Read More
More Headwinds – CHIPS Act Chop? – Chip Equip Re-Shore? Orders Canceled & Fab Delay