Designing custom IP blocks is a challenge at the transistor-level and I wanted to learn what the recommended methodology and EDA tool flow was at Synopsys. They have a webinar that you can register for and it takes 30 minutes to learn what they have to say, or you can read a White Paper. If you cannot spare that much time, then my summary… Read More





Test Synopsys offensive in VIP and try the quiz
I have recently blogged about Synopsys offensive in the Verification IP market. Did Synopsys again launched a new product, or announced a new acquisition? This would be a serious topic to blog, but today’s blog is closer to gaming than market analysis. Sometimes it’s good to have fun, even if the topic is serious! In fact, Synopsys… Read More
Designing ARM Powered High Performance SoCs on 28nm and 20nm!
Last week I had an interesting meeting with GLOBALFOUNDRIES executives Kevin Meyer and Mojy Chian. It certainly seems that GFI has turned a corner! I will be in Dresden next week for DATE 2012 and will also visit the GFI Fab there. 28nm and 20nm are on track so expect an aggressive implementation plan from GFI this year.… Read More
OpenAccess DB – Productivity and Beyond!
As I have been watching the developments in EDA and Semiconductor industry, it is apparent that we remain fragmented unless pushed to adopt a common standard mostly due to business reasons. Foundries are dictating on the rules to be followed by designs, thereby EDA tools incorporating them. Also, design companies needed to work… Read More
Call for ERSA Sponsorship: International Gathering for Application Developers!
Commercial & Academic
July 16-19, 2012, Las Vegas, USA
ersaconf.org/ersa-news
Not me. Who owns IP quality?
Now that the dominant approach to building an SoC is to get IP from a number of sources and assemble it into a chip, the issue of IP quality is more and more critical. A chip won’t work if the IP doesn’t work, but it is quite difficult to verify this because the SoC design team is not intimately familiar with the IP blocks since… Read More
Atrenta/TSMC Soft-IP Alliance: 10 companies make the grade
Last May, Atrenta and TSMC announced the Soft-IP Alliance Program which uses SpyGlass and a subset of its GuideWare reference methodology to implement TSMC’s IP quality assessment program. TSMC requires all soft-IP providers to reach a minimum level of completeness before their IP is listed on TSMC online. Since TSMC … Read More
Verdi’s 3rd Symphony
The first version of the debug platform Verdi (then called Debussy) dates back to 1996 over 15 years ago. The second version was released in 2002. And now SpringSoft is releasing the 3rd version Verdi[SUP]3[/SUP]which is a completely new generation. A tool environment like Verdi seems to need to be completely refreshed about every… Read More
TSMC 28nm Yield Explained!
Yield, no topic is more important to the semiconductor ecosystem. After spending a significant part of my career on Design for Manufacturability (DFM) and Design for Yield (DFY), I’m seriously offended when semiconductor professionals make false and misleading statements that negatively affects the industry that … Read More
The 2012 International Conference on ENGINEERING OF RECONFIGURABLE SYSTEMS AND ALGORITHMS – ERSA’12
July 16-19, 2012, Monte Carlo Resort, Las Vegas , Nevada , USA
ERSA-News: ERSA-NEWS ERSA’12 Website: http://ersaconf.org/ersa12
Speculative Execution: Rethinking the Approach to CPU Scheduling