HDMI, DisplayPort, MHL IPs + Engineering Team = Good Move

HDMI, DisplayPort, MHL IPs + Engineering Team = Good Move
by Eric Esteve on 02-17-2014 at 10:18 am

This news is certainly not as amazing that the acquisition of MIPS by Imagination, or Arteris by Qualcomm… but it shows that Cadence is building a complete Interface IP port-folio, brick after brick. The result will be that a complete wall is being built on the Synopsys road to monopoly and complete success on Interface IP market.… Read More


Designing an SoC with 16nm FinFET

Designing an SoC with 16nm FinFET
by Daniel Payne on 02-11-2014 at 9:35 pm

IC designers contemplating the transition to 16nm FinFET technology for their next SoC need to be informed about design flow and IP changes, so TSMC teamed up with Cadence Design Systems today to present a webinar on that topic. I attended the webinar and will summarize my findings.

Shown below is a 3D layout concept of an ideal FinFET… Read More


SoC Verification Closure Pushes New Paradigms

SoC Verification Closure Pushes New Paradigms
by Pawan Fangaria on 02-06-2014 at 10:00 am

In the current decade of SoCs, semiconductor design size and complexity has grown by unprecedented scale in terms of gate density, number of IPs, memory blocks, analog and digital content and so on; and yet expected to increase further by many folds. Given that level of design, it’s imperative that SoC verification challenge has… Read More


Cadence Acquires Forte

Cadence Acquires Forte
by Paul McLellan on 02-05-2014 at 4:46 pm


Cadence today announced that it is acquiring Forte Design Systems. Forte was the earliest of the high-level synthesis (HLS) companies. There were earlier products. Synopsys had Behavioral Compiler and Cadence had a product whose name I forget (Visual Architect?), but both products were too early and were canceled. Cadence … Read More


Who needs DDR4 PHY running at 2667 Mbps?

Who needs DDR4 PHY running at 2667 Mbps?
by Eric Esteve on 02-02-2014 at 11:15 am

As of today, DDR4 are targeting server, networking and consumer applications, and it will take another year before we use DDR4 equipped PC at home. In fact, a majority of consumers will rather buy a smartphone or tablet than a PC, most of these devices coming with PLDDR2 and only a few high-end tablets are equipped with LPDDR3 memory.… Read More


Update on a Space-Based Router for IC Design

Update on a Space-Based Router for IC Design
by Daniel Payne on 01-31-2014 at 11:50 am

When I started my IC design career back in 1978 all IC routing was done manually, today however we have many automated approaches to IC routing that save time and do a more thorough job than manual routing. To get an update on space-based routers for IC design I connected with Yuval Shay at Cadence today. The basic idea behind a spaced-based… Read More


High Quality PHY IPs Require Careful Management of Design Data and Processes

High Quality PHY IPs Require Careful Management of Design Data and Processes
by Pawan Fangaria on 01-29-2014 at 10:05 am

In last few years IP design has grown significantly compared to the rest of the semiconductor industry. There are newer IP start-ups opening across the world, particularly in India and China. Amid this rush, I wanted to understand the actual dynamics pushing this business and whether all of these IPs follow quality standards. … Read More


CDNLive World Tour

CDNLive World Tour
by Paul McLellan on 01-28-2014 at 11:00 pm

CDNLive is becoming a real worldwide event, starting in March in San Jose and ending in November in Tel Aviv, Israel.

The complete schedule is:

  • March 11-12th, Santa Clara, California
  • May 19th-21st, Munich, Germany
  • July 15th, Seoul, Korea
  • August 15th, Shanghai, China
  • August 7th, Hsinchu, Taiwan
  • August 11-12th, Bangalore, India
Read More

What will drive MEMS to drive I-o-T and I-o-P?

What will drive MEMS to drive I-o-T and I-o-P?
by Pawan Fangaria on 01-27-2014 at 5:45 am

By I-o-P, I mean Internet-of-People- I couldn’t think of anything better than this to describe a technology which becomes your custodian for everything you do; you may consider it as your good companion through life or an invariably controlling spy. This is obvious with the embedded sensor techno-products such as Kolibree, a … Read More


Parasitic Debugging in Complex Design – How Easy?

Parasitic Debugging in Complex Design – How Easy?
by Pawan Fangaria on 01-23-2014 at 9:00 am

When we talk about parasitic, we talk about post layout design further expanded in terms of electrical components such as resistances and capacitances. In the semiconductor design environment where multiple parts of a design from different sources are assembled together into highly complex, high density SoC, imagine how complex… Read More