I have always felt that FPGAs have been the red haired step child of Silicon Valley. Software weenies have hated them, they are mysterious and take too long to route. Even though they can be massively parallel and the most deterministic piece of silicon you can buy besides a million dollar ASIC, the GPU steals their glory, for now. … Read More
Most simple testbenches have close to no structure, are terrible to modify and hopeless to understand. They often take far too much time to implement and provide close to no support when debugging potential problems. This webinar will demonstrate how to build a far better testbench with respect to all these issues – in significantly… Read More
Collaboration in EDA is nothing new, however you may not be aware of how the Dini Group and Tektronix have worked together on an FPGA prototyping platform to address issues like debugging with full visibility across an entire multi-FPGA design. At SemiWiki we’ve blogged a couple of times so far about the new debug approach… Read More
Once upon a time, ASIC designers were integrating memories in their design (using a memory compiler being part of the design tools provided by the ASIC vendor), then they had to make the memory observable, controllable… and start developing the test program for the function, not a very enthusiastic task (“AAAA” and “5555” and other… Read More
I’ve used Aldec tools like their Verilog simulator (Riviera PRO) when teaching a class to engineers at Lattice Semi, so to get an update about the company I spoke with Dave Rinehart recently by phone. A big product announcement by Aldec today is for their ASIC prototyping system with a capacity range of 4 Million to 96 Million… Read More
A modern fab can cost as much as $10B dollars. That’s billion with a B. Since it has a lifetime of perhaps 5 years, owning a fab costs around $50 per second and that’s before you buy any silicon or chemicals or design any chips. Obviously anyone owning a fab had better be planning on making and selling a lot of chips if they are going to make… Read More
All semiconductor companies were caught up in ASIC in some way or another because of the basic economics. Semiconductor technology allowed medium sized designs to be done, and medium sized designs were pretty much all different. The technology didn’t yet allow whole systems to be put on a single chip. So semiconductor companies… Read More
In the early 1980s the ideas and infrastructure for what would eventually be called ASIC started to come together. Semiconductor technology had reached the point that a useful number of transistors could be put onto a chip. But unlike earlier, when a chip only held a few transistors and thus could be used to create basic generic building… Read More
In the embedded world that drives much of today’s ASIC innovation, there is no bigger name than ARM. Not to enter the ARM vs. Intel fray, but it’s no exaggeration to say that ARM’s impact on SoCs is as great as Intel’s on the PC. Few cutting edge SoCs are coming to market that do not include some sort of embedded… Read More
One of the truisms of today’s disaggregated semiconductor design and manufacturing model is counter-intuitive to the do-it-yourself focus that is at the heart of every engineer. And yet, time and time again, success rewards those who understand that with today’s ever increasing complexity, it is difficult, if… Read More
