STMicro to Showcase Turnkey NFC Design at MWC

STMicro to Showcase Turnkey NFC Design at MWC
by Majeed Ahmad on 03-01-2015 at 10:00 pm

Near-field communication (NFC) technology is finally realizing its potential, thanks to the impetus provided by Apple Pay, and it’s becoming evident from the pre-Mobile World Congress (MWC) buzz coming from several makers of chips, smartphones and wearable devices.

Among the companies displaying NFC products at the 2015 … Read More


Coverage Driven Analog Verification

Coverage Driven Analog Verification
by Paul McLellan on 11-25-2014 at 7:00 am

Ad hoc digital design verification approaches ran out of steam at least a decade ago when designs got intractably large to make it feasible to keep track of everything with pen and paper and excel. But analog design has remained largely ad hoc to this day. The designer runs spice, looks at the waveforms that come out and decide whether… Read More


Coverage Driven Verification for Analog?

Coverage Driven Verification for Analog?
by Pawan Fangaria on 09-26-2014 at 1:00 am

We know there is a big divide between analog and digital design methodologies, level of automation, validation and verification processes, yet they cannot stay without each other because any complete system on a chip (SoC) demands them to be together. And therefore, there are different methodologies on the floor to combine analog… Read More


Design & EDA Collaboration Advances Mixed-Signal Verification through VCS AMS

Design & EDA Collaboration Advances Mixed-Signal Verification through VCS AMS
by Pawan Fangaria on 09-07-2014 at 8:00 pm

Last week it was a rare opportunity for me to attend a webinar where an SoC design house, a leading IP provider and a leading EDA tool provider joined together to present on how the tool capabilities are being used for advanced mixed-signal simulation of large designs, faster with accuracy. It’s always been a struggle to combine design… Read More


Teach Yourself Silvaco

Teach Yourself Silvaco
by Paul McLellan on 05-12-2014 at 10:53 am

In the dim and distant past, if you wanted to learn how to use a particular EDA tool then you would go on a training course. This would often be multiple days and often a significant dollar investment too. For most EDA companies, that option still exists and the big 3 have quite extensive training catalogs.

But nowadays it is often easier… Read More


FinFET Custom Design

FinFET Custom Design
by Paul McLellan on 04-02-2014 at 8:30 pm

At CDNLive, Bob Mullen of TSMC gave a presentation on their new custom FinFET flow, doing design, and verifying designs. At 16nm there are all sorts of relatively new verification problems such as layout dependent effects (LDE) and voltage dependent design rules. We had some of this at 20nm but like most things in semiconductor,… Read More


Mixed-Signal SoC Debugging & IP Integration Made Easy

Mixed-Signal SoC Debugging & IP Integration Made Easy
by Pawan Fangaria on 02-28-2014 at 7:30 am

A semiconductor SoC design can have multiple components at different levels of abstractions from different sources and in different languages. While designing an SoC, IPs at different levels have to be integrated without losing the overall design goals. Of course, quality of an IP inside and outside of an SoC must be tested thoroughly.… Read More


Speeding Up AMS Verification by Modeling with Real Numbers

Speeding Up AMS Verification by Modeling with Real Numbers
by Daniel Payne on 02-15-2014 at 7:00 pm

My first introduction to modeling an AMS behavior using a language was back in the 1980’s at Silicon Compilers using the Lsim simulator. Around the same time the VHDL and Verilog languages emerged to handle the modeling of both digital and some analog behaviors. The big reason to model analog behavior with a language is for… Read More


AMS IC Simulation Update from Synopsys at DAC

AMS IC Simulation Update from Synopsys at DAC
by Daniel Payne on 06-10-2013 at 6:19 pm

Last year at DAC we didn’t really know the circuit simulation roadmap for Synopsys because of all the EDA company acquisitions, however this year it’s clear to me that:

  • HSPICE continues on, although it’s a lower performance circuit simulator than FineSim
  • FineSim from Magma is well-loved, and faster than HSPICE
Read More