Formal methods are a vital complement to other tools in the verification arsenal, but they’re not without challenges. One of the more daunting is the “inconclusive” result – that case where the tool seems to be telling you that it simply gave up trying to figure out if a particular assertion is true or false. Compounding the problem,… Read More
If a CPU or CPU cluster in an SoC is the brain of an SoC, then the interconnect is the rest of the central nervous system, connecting all the other processing and IO functions to that brain. This interconnect must enable these functions to communicate with the brain, with multiple types of memory, and with each other as quickly and predictably… Read More
If you’re not up-to-speed on 5G, there are three use-cases: eMBB(enhanced mobile broadband) for mobile platforms (Gbps rates, immersive gaming, VR, AR – spectrum usage also extends up to mmWave, but that’s a different topic), mMTCfor massive machine type communication (ultra-low cost, ultra-low power, very dense networks)… Read More
We have become accustomed to the idea that safety expectations can’t be narrowed down to one thing you do in design. They pervade all aspects of design from overall process through analysis, redundancies in design, fault analytics and mitigation for faults and on-board monitors for reliability among other requirements and techniques.… Read More
If you have a phone, you probably know it has a SIM card, for most of us the anchor that ties us into a 2/3-year plan with one network provider, unless you have an unlocked phone. Even then, you have to mess around swapping SIM cards if you travel overseas. Wouldn’t it be nice if the SIM was embedded and could be switched though an app or an… Read More
DVCon turns 30 this year which is a very big deal. My oldest child also turns 30 this year which really puts things in perspective looking back at what we have all accomplished during that time. DVCon originally started as a user’s group at the 1988 Design Automation Conference in Anaheim California and the rest as they say is history.… Read More
Performance verification is among the most challenging of objectives in any SoC verification plan. It’s difficult to start effectively until quite late in the development cycle, at which point you don’t have a lot of time left to develop extensive performance-oriented testbenches. So many teams adapt functional tests to this… Read More
When I think of an IP development kit, I imagine software plus a hardware model I can run on a prototyper or, closer to the kits offered by semi companies, software plus a board hosting an FPGA implementation of the IP along with DDR memory, flash and a variety of interfaces. These approaches work well for IP providers because hardware… Read More
In case you missed the TSMC event, ANSYS and TSMC are going to reprise a very important topic – signing-off reliability for ADAS and semi-autonomous /autonomous systems. This topic hasn’t had a lot of media attention amid the glamor and glitz of what might be possible in driverless cars. But it now seems like the cold light of real … Read More
There are few tech promises these days as prominent as those surrounding driverless cars (trucks, buses, …). But thanks to always-on media amplifiers, it’s not always easy to separate potential from reality. I recently talked to Kurt Shuler, VP Marketing at Arteris, who shared his view after returning from this year’s CES. Kurt… Read More
