Who knew designing PLL’s was so complicated?

Who knew designing PLL’s was so complicated?
by Tom Simon on 03-27-2017 at 12:00 pm

Well it comes as no surprise to those that use and design them, that PLL’s are a world unto themselves and very complicated indeed. With PLL’s we are talking about analog designs that rely on ring oscillators or LC tanks. They are needed on legacy nodes, like the ones that IoT chips are based on, and they are crucial for high speed advanced… Read More


Tuning Analog IP for High Yield at SMIC

Tuning Analog IP for High Yield at SMIC
by Daniel Payne on 12-29-2015 at 12:00 pm

Analog IP is more difficult to design and optimize for a given process node compared to digital IP, so any automation for analog designers is always welcome. The engineers at SMIC in China have customers that design analog IP and often they need to know how to optimize it for a specific process, so I watched a presentation by Josh Yang,… Read More


Managing Design Flows in RF Modules

Managing Design Flows in RF Modules
by Majeed Ahmad on 04-24-2015 at 7:00 pm

The semiconductor industry is expected to grow at a reasonable pace in 2015 and beyond, with the biggest market being compute applications followed by wireless and consumer applications. The highest growth, however, is expected to be in application-specific products for devices such as smartphones, wearables, memories, … Read More


Simple Analog ASIC Solves Thermal Analysis Problems

Simple Analog ASIC Solves Thermal Analysis Problems
by admin on 03-02-2015 at 1:00 pm

In a world where Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) and Application Specific Standard Products (ASSPs) are dominating every conceivable application, greater attention is being applied to their long term reliability. These chips are being built on smaller lithographies, running at higher speeds, dissipating… Read More


How to detect weak nodes in a power-off analog circuit?

How to detect weak nodes in a power-off analog circuit?
by Jean-Francois Debroux on 09-01-2014 at 4:00 pm

Most analog cells have a power off mode intended to reduce power consumption. In this mode, all the circuit branches between the supply lines are set in a high impedance mode by driving MOS gates to a blocking voltage. This is a somewhat similar situation to that in tri-state digital circuits.

When a branch is set in that high impedance… Read More


Digital, Analog, Software, IP – Isn’t it all just the same?

Digital, Analog, Software, IP – Isn’t it all just the same?
by Daniel Payne on 04-25-2014 at 8:31 pm

Designing an SoC requires a team, and the engineers typically use lots of specialized EDA software and semiconductor IP to get the job done. Many have started to ask about how designing a chip is different than designing and managing a large software project, or how is analog design different than digital design in terms of managing… Read More


Want to learn Mixed-Signal Design and Verification?

Want to learn Mixed-Signal Design and Verification?
by Daniel Payne on 07-20-2011 at 6:13 pm

Workshops are a great where to learn hands-on about IC design technology. Mentor has a free workshop to introduce you to creating, simulating and verifying mixed-signal (Analog and Digital) designs.

PLL waveforms showing both digital and analog signals.

Dates in Fremont, California
July 26, 2011
September 15, 2011
November… Read More