Lunch on Tuesday at DAC was sponsored by the IPL Alliance and thankfully this year they skipped the attempt at humor and focused on interoperable PDKs. Presenting companies include: Synopsys, Dongbu HiTek, TowerJazz, X-FAB and Si2. Having both OpenPDK and iPDK on the same platform does sound like a peaceful co-existence to me,… Read More
One year ago I met with Hany Elhak of Synopsys to get an update on what was new with HSPICE in 2011, so this year at DAC Hany met me at the Synopsys booth for a quick update.
HSPICE has something called Precision Parallel so with 16 cores your IC circuit simulations will have about 10 x speed up compared to a single core.… Read More
I caught the Berkeley Design Automation presentation in the TSMC Theater, where Simon Young (BDA’s director of product marketing) described the Analog FastSPICE (AFS) nanometer circuit verification platform, built on their foundation of very fast, very accurate, high capacity circuit simulation.
BDA claims the AFS platform… Read More
Okay, President Obama didn’t actually stop at DAC but he did do a drive by. I happened to be stepping out for some much needed fresh air and there goes his speeding motorcade. It was quite a sight actually, with all of the motorcycles, SUVs, a SWAT vehicle and even a paramedic rig (my son the Fireman drives one of those). The president … Read More
On Tuesday, June 5th, starting at 3:05 pm in San Francisco, the planet Venus will cross, or transit, the sun. If you stop by Ciranova’s DAC booth #1608 anytime on Monday or Tuesday, they will give you a free pair of solar viewing glasses that will let you view the transit safely.
According to the NASA website, Transits of Venus… Read More
TSMC has had an interesting year thus far. 28nm is ramped and will dominate the mobile market for years to come. 20nm is in development with tape outs scheduled for the end of this year. FinFETS are coming making it a very exciting time in the semiconductor ecosystem. … Read More
ClioSoft had a record year in 2011, right after they started working with SemiWiki. Coincidence? Of course not. You can visit the SemiWiki ClioSoft landing page HERE. Be sure and read the customer interviews done by Daniel Payne. It is really nice to see customers stand up and speak for their tools, much more interesting than listening… Read More
Synopsys just delivered second quarter 2012 results with improved revenue on a year-over-year basis. Unfortunately operating expenses are said to be out of control. I’m not a stock guy so for more financial information and analysis try the Motley Fool article HERE.
The interesting thing to note is that Synopsys still has a pile… Read More
The introduction of 28nm high-volume production for IC semiconductor devices will usher the era of “extreme low-k1” manufacturing, i.e. the unprecedented situation in the long history of the silicon technology roadmap, where computationally intensive (and EDA-driven) Design-Technology Co-Optimization will become the… Read More
What’s new at Cadence? Quite a bit actually. I have always been a Cadence fan, I mean really, they gave birth to modern EDA. Unfortunately, Cadence really lost me during the Avant! legal action, the Mike Fister years, and EDA360. Recently, however, Cadence has made some big changes that will definitely get them back on my good side.… Read More
