A New Verification Conference Coming to Austin

A New Verification Conference Coming to Austin
by Bernard Murphy on 08-15-2023 at 6:00 am

Actually not so new, just new to us in the US. Verification Futures is already well established as a Tessolve event with a 10-year track record in the UK. This year they are bringing the conference to Austin on September 14th (REGISTER HERE).

While DVCon is an ever-popular event for sharing verification ideas, it isn’t always accessible… Read More


VC Formal Enabled QED Proofs on a RISC-V Core

VC Formal Enabled QED Proofs on a RISC-V Core
by Bernard Murphy on 08-10-2023 at 6:00 am

The Synopsys VC Formal group have a real talent for finding industry speakers to talk on illuminating outside-the-box-topics in formal verification. Not too long ago I covered an Intel talk of this kind. A recent webinar highlighted use of formal methods used together with a cool technique I have covered elsewhere called Quick… Read More


Insights into DevOps Trends in Hardware Design

Insights into DevOps Trends in Hardware Design
by Bernard Murphy on 08-09-2023 at 6:00 am

DevOps

Periodically I like to check in on the unsung heroes behind the attention-grabbing world of design. I’m speaking of the people responsible for the development and deployment infrastructure on which we all depend – version control, testing, build, release – collectively known these days as DevOps (development operations). … Read More


Qualitative Shift in RISC-V Targets Raises Verification Bar

Qualitative Shift in RISC-V Targets Raises Verification Bar
by Bernard Murphy on 08-02-2023 at 6:00 am

SVIPs

I had grown comfortable thinking about RISC-V as a cost-saving and more flexible alternative to Intel/AMD or Arm in embedded applications. Where clearly it is already doing very well. But following a discussion with Dave Kelf and Adnan Hamid of Breker, RISC-V goals have become much more ambitious, chasing the same big system applications… Read More


Automated Code Review. Innovation in Verification

Automated Code Review. Innovation in Verification
by Bernard Murphy on 07-31-2023 at 6:00 am

Innovation New

A little thinking outside the box this time. Microsoft is adding automation to their (and LinkedIn) code reviews; maybe we should consider this option also? Paul Cunningham (Senior VP/GM, Verification at Cadence), Raúl Camposano (Silicon Catalyst, entrepreneur, former Synopsys CTO and now Silvaco CTO) and I continue our series… Read More


Xcelium Safety Certification Rounds Out Cadence Safety Solution

Xcelium Safety Certification Rounds Out Cadence Safety Solution
by Bernard Murphy on 07-27-2023 at 6:00 am

MIDAS System min

While fully autonomous driving may now be a distant dream, ADAS continues to be a very active industry driver as much for its safety advantages as for other features. Today in the hierarchy of SAE levels, SAE 2+ may represent the most active area of development rather than levels 3 through 5. This range of options still requires a human… Read More


Convergence Between EDA and MCAD and Industrial Software

Convergence Between EDA and MCAD and Industrial Software
by Bernard Murphy on 07-25-2023 at 6:00 am

convergence eda mcad etc min

Cadence hosted a panel at DAC on how EDA, MCAD and industrial software have come together, a topic I always find interesting. Many years ago, I worked on a NAVAIR contract bid team, an eye-opener for a young engineer who thought that innovation started and ended with electronic design. I remember CATIA (3D modeling) being a component… Read More


Back to Basics – Designing Out PPA Risk

Back to Basics – Designing Out PPA Risk
by Bernard Murphy on 07-19-2023 at 6:00 am

balancing rocks

I wrote earlier about managing service-level risk in SoC design, since the minimum service level a system can guarantee under realistic traffic is critical to OEM guarantees of dependable system performance. An ABS design which might get bogged down in traffic under only 0.1% of scenarios is of no use to anyone. That said, meeting… Read More


Sondrel Extends ASIC Turnkey Design to Supply Services From Europe to US

Sondrel Extends ASIC Turnkey Design to Supply Services From Europe to US
by Bernard Murphy on 07-12-2023 at 6:00 am

Sondrel scaling

It’s no secret that system companies are driving a lot of new silicon. Google, AWS, Tesla and others have well-established design teams delivering differentiated servers, AI engines and other technologies. I’m sure NVIDIA suspects sub rosa projects are already underway in many of these hyperscalers to design out their GPUs.… Read More


Vision Transformers Challenge Accelerator Architectures

Vision Transformers Challenge Accelerator Architectures
by Bernard Murphy on 07-05-2023 at 6:00 am

vision transformer

For what seems like a long time in the fast-moving world of AI, CNNs and their relatives have driven AI engine architectures at the edge. While the nature of neural net algorithms has evolved significantly, they are all assumed to be efficiently handled on a heterogenous platform processing through the layers of a DNN: an NPU for … Read More