Managing Your Ballooning Network Storage

Managing Your Ballooning Network Storage
by Alex Tan on 05-24-2018 at 12:00 pm

As companies scale by adding more engineers, there is a tendency to spread across multiple design sites as they strive to hire the best available talent. Multi-site development also impacts startups as they try to minimize their burn rate by having an offsite design center such as India, China or Vietnam.

Both the IoT and automotive… Read More


TSMC Technologies for IoT and Automotive

TSMC Technologies for IoT and Automotive
by Alex Tan on 05-15-2018 at 12:00 pm

At TSMC 2018 Silcon Valley Technology Symposium, Dr Kevin Zhang, TSMC VP of Business Development covered technology updates for IoT platform. The three growth drivers in this segment namely TSMC low power, RF enhancement and embedded memory technology (MRAM/RRAM) reinforced both progress and growth in global semiconductorRead More


TSMC Technologies for Mobile and HPC

TSMC Technologies for Mobile and HPC
by Alex Tan on 05-10-2018 at 12:00 pm

During TSMC 2018 Technology Symposium, Dr. B.J. Woo, TSMC VP of Business Development presented market trends in the area of mobile applications and HPC computing as well as shared TSMC progress in making breakthrough efforts in the technology offerings to serve these two market segments.

Both 5G and AI are taking the center stage… Read More


Cross View Static Validation

Cross View Static Validation
by Alex Tan on 05-08-2018 at 12:00 pm

Improper handling of design validation could simply translate into a debugging exercise. In mainstream RTL2GDS flow, design implementation involves a top-level integration and lower-level block developments. These lower-level components, comprising of macros, IPs and standard cells are subjected to frequent abstraction… Read More


Virtuoso at CDNLive – A Press Briefing With Yuval Shay

Virtuoso at CDNLive – A Press Briefing With Yuval Shay
by Alex Tan on 05-01-2018 at 12:00 pm

At CDNLive Silicon Valley 2018, I talked with Yuval Shay, Director of Product Management of Cadence Custom IC & PCB Group to scope out some more details on the recent Virtuoso product refresh announced earlier in the morning by Cadence Sr. VP & GM of the same group, Tom Beckley.

Tom shared his view on enabling the fourth industrial… Read More


Electrical Reliability Verification – Now At FullChip

Electrical Reliability Verification – Now At FullChip
by Alex Tan on 04-25-2018 at 12:00 pm

Advanced process technology offers both device and interconnect scaling for increased design density and higher performance while invoking also significant implementation complexities. Aside from the performance, power and area (PPA) aspects, designer is getting entrenched with the need of tackling more reliability … Read More


RDC – A Cousin To CDC

RDC – A Cousin To CDC
by Alex Tan on 04-18-2018 at 12:00 pm

In a post-silicon bringup, it is customary to bring the design into a known state prior to applying further testing sequences. This is achieved through a Power-on-Reset (POR) or similar reset strategy which translates to initializing all the storage elements to a known state.

During design implementation, varying degrees of… Read More


Enabling A Data Driven Economy

Enabling A Data Driven Economy
by Alex Tan on 04-13-2018 at 12:00 pm


The theme of this year CDNLive Silicon Valley keynote given by Cadence CEO, Lip-Bu Tan evolves around data and how it drives Cadence to make a transition from System Design Enablement (SDE) to Data Driven Enablement (DDE). Before elaborating further, he noted on some CDNLive conference statistics: 120 sessions, 84% done by users,… Read More


HCM Is More Than Data Management

HCM Is More Than Data Management
by Alex Tan on 04-12-2018 at 12:00 pm

While tracking Moore’s Law has become a more expensive and difficult endeavor in the HPC design, the mobile SOC design space is also increasingly heterogeneous and complex. Strict safety guidelines such as the ISO-26262 being imposed in the automotive applications further exacerbate the situation.

Looking closer into the … Read More