FPGA-based prototyping has provided a major advance in verification and validation for complex hardware/software systems but even its most fervent proponents would admit that setup is not exactly push-button. It’s not uncommon to hear of weeks to setup a prototype or of the prototype finally being ready after you tape-out. … Read More
Whether you’re right out of college, starting on your first design, a burn-and-churn designer thinking there must be a better way or an ASIC designer wanting to do a little prototyping, this webinar may be for you. It’s a fast start on using the Aldec Riviera-PRO platform for verification setup, run and debug, and more. There are … Read More
I’ve written before about the growing utility of FPGA-based solutions in datacenters, particularly around configurable networking applications. There I just touched on the general idea; Achronix have developed a white-paper to expand on the need in more detail and to explain how a range of possible solutions based on their … Read More
A quick digression into a fun topic. A common limitation in present-day electronics is the size and 2D nature of the display. If it must be mobile this is further constrained, and becomes especially severe in wearable electronics, such as watches. Workarounds include projection and bringing the display closer to the eye, as in … Read More
Machine learning (ML) is the hot new technology of our time so EDA development teams are eagerly searching for new ways to optimize various facets of design using ML to distill wisdom from the mountains of data generated in previous designs. Pre-ML, we had little interest in historical data and would mostly look only at localized… Read More
At the risk of attracting contempt from terminology purists, I think most of us would agree that emulation is a great way to prototype a hardware design before you commit to building, especially when you need to test system software together with that prototype. But setting up your own emulation resource isn’t for everyone. The … Read More
Synopsys hosted a lunch panel on Tuesday of DAC this year, in which verification leaders from Intel, Qualcomm, Wave Computing, NXP and AMD talked about how they are using Synopsys verification technologies. Panelists covered multiple domains but the big takeaway for me was their full-throated endorsement of the ZeBu emulation… Read More
Once in a while I come across a vendor-developed webinar which is so generally useful it deserves to be shared beyond the confines of sponsored sites. I don’t consider this spamming – if you choose you can ignore the vendor-specific part of the webinar and still derive significant value from the rest. In this instance, the topic is… Read More
The defining characteristic of In-Circuit-Emulation (ICE) has been that the emulator is connected to real circuitry – a storage device perhaps, and PCIe or Ethernet interfaces. The advantage is that you can test your emulated model against real traffic and responses, rather than an interface model which may not fully capture… Read More
On the off-chance you missed my previous pieces on this topic, at these dimensions conventional margin-based analysis becomes unreasonably pessimistic and it is necessary to analyze multiple dimensions together. People who build aircraft engines, turbines and other complex systems have known this for quite a long time. You… Read More
