Transistor-level circuit designers have long used SPICE for circuit simulation, mostly because it is silicon accurate and helps them to predict the function, timing, power, waveforms, slopes and delays in a cell before fabrication. RTL designers use digital simulators that have a huge capacity but are lacking analog modeling.… Read More
I am a fan of product releases which bundle together multiple high-value advances. That approach reduces the frequency of releases (no bad thing) in exchange for more to offer per release, better proven through solid partner validation. The Dynamic Duo III release falls in this class, offering improvements in performance, capacity,… Read More
IC layouts go through extensive design rule checking to ensure correctness, before being accepted for fabrication at a foundry or IDM. There’s something called the antenna effect that happens during chip manufacturing where plasma-induced damage (PID) can lower the reliability of MOSFET devices. Layout designers run Design… Read More
Digital design and verification is well understood by EDA vendors and IC designers, however mixed-signal design and verification is more challenging, because the continuous nature of analog signals requires more compute resources and specialized design skills. Siemens EDA has a unique offering in what they call Symphony… Read More
I’m a fan of DVCon, a fan of Accellera and a fan of Munich, hosting DVCon Europe once again. This year’s event runs from November 14th through 15th (with some events on the 16th) at the Holiday Inn Munich in the City Center. Phillippe Notton (CEO, SiPearl) will deliver a keynote on “Energy Efficient High-Performance Computing in the… Read More
Every year EDA vendor MunEDA hosts a user group meeting where engineers present how they used automation tools to improve their IC designs, and one presentation from Peter Huber of Infineon caught my attention, it was all about SRAM design optimization. Peter has authored papers at IEEE conferences and been issued patents related… Read More
I recently had an update from Lu Dai, Chairman of Accellera, also Sr. Director of Engineering at Qualcomm. He’s always a pleasure to talk to, in this instance giving me a capsule summary of status in 3 areas that interested me: CDC, Functional Safety and AMS. I will start with CDC, a new proposed working group in Accellera. To manage… Read More
A recent educational virtual event with the above title was jointly sponsored by Synopsys and Global Foundries. The objective was to bring awareness to state-of-the-art mixed-signal design practices for automotive circuits. The 2-day event comprised of lectures delivered by engineering professors and doctoral students… Read More
This article about verification is part 2 of a two article series. Please see part 1 on validation HERE.
Verification is a field that has emerged as its own discipline. It’s no longer being relegated to an activity led by the design team to which time is allocated as long as it doesn’t get in the way of designing. Chip companies… Read More
In a week where the “phase 1” trade deal between US and China was finally signed, here is all the key news from the semiconductor and technology sector around the world.
After 2 years of an ever increasing trade war, the US and China have signed the so called Phase 1 deal aimed at reducing trade frictions.
Just as important as what is … Read More
