Skipping over debates about what exactly changed hands in this transaction, what interests me is the technical motivation since I’m familiar with solutions at both companies. Of course, I can construct my own high-level rationalization, but I wanted to hear from the insiders, so I pestered Vic Kulkarni (VP and Chief Strategist)… Read More
Synopsys just delivered a Webinar on using the sequential equivalence app (SEQ) in their VC Formal product to check that clock-gating didn’t mess up the functional intent of your RTL. This webinar is one in a series on VC Formal, designed to highlight the wide range of capabilities Synopsys has to offer in formal verification. They… Read More
Most of us would agree that safety is important in transportation and most of us know that in automotive electronics this means ISO26262 compliance. But, except for the experts, the details don’t make for an especially gripping read. I thought it would be interesting to get behind the process to better understand the motivation,… Read More
Verification as an effectively unbounded problem will always stir debate on ways to improve. A natural response is to put heavy emphasis on making existing methods faster and more seamless. That’s certainly part of continuous improvement but sometimes we also need to step back and ask the bigger questions – what is sufficient … Read More
Clock gating is arguably the mostly widely-used design method to reduce power since it is broadly applicable even when more sophisticated methods like power islands are ruled out. But this style can be fraught with hazards even for careful designers. When you start with a proven-correct logic design and add clock gating, the logic… Read More
It takes courage and perhaps even a little insanity to start a new EDA venture these days – unless you have a decently differentiated value proposition in a hot market. One company that caught my eye, Austemper, seems to measure up to these standards (though I can’t speak to the insanity part). They offer EDA tooling specifically… Read More
A little self-indulgence for the season, to lighten the relentless diet of DAC updates. I found a recent Wired article based on a TED talk on consciousness. The speaker drew a conclusion that consciousness was not something that could ever be captured in a machine and was a unique capability of living creatures (or at least humans).… Read More
Synopsys PrimeTime PX, popularly known as PT-PX, is widely recognized as the gold standard for power signoff. Calculation is based on a final gate-level netlist reflecting final gate selections and either approximate interconnect parasitics or final parasitics based on the post-layout netlist. The only way to get more accurate… Read More
It is self-evident that large systems of any type would not be possible without hierarchical design. Decomposing a large system objective into subsystems, and subsystems of subsystems, has multiple benefits. Smaller subsystems can be more easily understood and better tested when built, robust 3[SUP]rd[/SUP] party alternatives… Read More
DAC is coming, next week, in beautiful downtown Austin at the Convention Center. I’ll be there Monday and Tuesday, running around the exhibit area. If you haven’t yet got your plane and hotel tickets, drop everything and start looking. I’m guessing this will be as popular as it always is, especially given the venue. I know of multiple… Read More
