Security Path Verification

Security Path Verification
by Paul McLellan on 12-16-2013 at 5:18 pm

Formal approaches and security are a perfect match since you really want to prove that there are no holes in your security, rather than just being fairly confident. At the recent Jasper User Group meeting, Victor Purri presented some case studies in security verification.

The Jasper Security Path Verification (SPV) App is used… Read More


Mentor Buys Oasys

Mentor Buys Oasys
by Paul McLellan on 12-14-2013 at 1:24 pm

Mentor is acquiring Oasys, subject to all the usual caveats about shareholder and regulatory approval. The shareholder paperwork went out earlier this week. The common stock is valueless so presumably the price is low (and Mentor historically has not paid high prices for its acquisitions).

So what is going to happen with the technology?… Read More


Known Unknowns and Unknown Unknowns

Known Unknowns and Unknown Unknowns
by Paul McLellan on 12-11-2013 at 3:18 pm

Donald Rumsfeld categorized what we knew into known unknowns and unknown unknowns. In a chip design, those unknown unknowns can bite you and leave you with a non-functional design, perhaps even intermittent failures which can be among the hardest problems to debug.

Chips are too big to do any sort of full gate-level simulation,… Read More


Physically Aware Synthesis

Physically Aware Synthesis
by Paul McLellan on 12-06-2013 at 2:47 pm

Yesterday Cadence had their annual front-end summit, the theme of which was physically aware design. I was especially interested in the first couple of presentations about physically aware synthesis. I joined Cadence in 1999 when they acquired Ambit Design Systems. One of the products that we had in development was called PKS… Read More


What Makes A Designer’s Day? A Bottleneck Solved!

What Makes A Designer’s Day? A Bottleneck Solved!
by Pawan Fangaria on 12-04-2013 at 3:00 pm

In an environment of SoCs with tough targets of multiple functionalities, smallest size, lowest power and fastest performance to achieve within a limited design cycle window in order to meet the rigid time-to-market requirements, any day spent without success becomes very frustrating for a designer. Especially during tape-out… Read More


SPICE Development Roadmap 2013!

SPICE Development Roadmap 2013!
by Daniel Nenni on 12-04-2013 at 11:00 am


The MOS-AK/GSA Modeling Working Group, a global compact modeling standardization forum, delivered its annual autumn compact modeling workshop on Sept. 20, 2013 as an integral part of the ESSDERC/ESSCIRC Conference in Bucharest (RO). The event received full sponsorship from leading industrial partners including Agilent… Read More


Webinar: Parasitic Debugging made easy!

Webinar: Parasitic Debugging made easy!
by Daniel Nenni on 12-03-2013 at 3:00 pm

We cordially invite you to attend this webinar and learn how to quickly debug post layout designs. Concept Engineering is a privately held company based in Freiburg, Germany. It was, founded in 1990 to develop and market innovative schematic generation and viewing technology for use with logic synthesis, verification, test … Read More


Semiconductor Process Development: A View from the Trenches at IEDM

Semiconductor Process Development: A View from the Trenches at IEDM
by Daniel Nenni on 11-25-2013 at 10:00 pm

There is always a lot of posturing and pontificating when semiconductor executives talk about the future of process development. They are fighting an air war of perception and investor expectations, so naturally want to make sure they have plenty to brag about. But, as we pointed out recently with Intel’s problems at 14nm, moving… Read More


Front-End Design Summit: Physically Aware Design

Front-End Design Summit: Physically Aware Design
by Daniel Nenni on 11-24-2013 at 12:00 pm

Save closure time and boost performance by incorporating knowledge of physically aware design early into your front-end design implementation flow

With the adoption of advanced process nodes, design closure is becoming increasingly difficult due to the lack of convergence between the front end and the back end of the register-transfer… Read More


Better License Usage vs More Licenses

Better License Usage vs More Licenses
by Paul McLellan on 11-22-2013 at 11:00 am

When you see a new product announcement from an EDA company, it is always put in terms that make it seem as if the engineer is sitting at his or her desktop with a big server and is running the new tool to wondrous effect. But the reality in the real world is that most companies have a computing infrastructure of server farms, often several… Read More