First Verdi Interoperability Apps Developer Forum

First Verdi Interoperability Apps Developer Forum
by Paul McLellan on 01-30-2014 at 11:47 am

Way back when SpringSoft was still SpringSoft and not Synopsys they launched Verdi Interoperability Apps (VIA) and an exchange for users to share them open-source style. I wrote about it back in 2011 when it was announced. Today, Synopsys announced the first developer forum for VIA. It will be held at SNUG on Wednesday, March 26,… 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

The Semiconductor Landscape – III

The Semiconductor Landscape – III
by Pawan Fangaria on 01-20-2014 at 12:30 pm

In continuation to my earlier observations and anticipations (landscape1, landscape2) which came up to my expectations, I was further inspired to ponder over the macros of our ever growing semiconductor industry. We may argue the business is stagnating, we may argue that the pace of scaling is slowing, but when I look back at the… Read More


Managing Heat for System Reliability

Managing Heat for System Reliability
by Pawan Fangaria on 01-17-2014 at 8:30 am

In most of the electronic equipments, semiconductor chips are a major source of heat generation. And in semiconductor designs several hardware and software techniques are being used to contain power dissipation; a major cause for heat. However due to multiple functionality being squeezed into small form factors, we continue… Read More


JasperGold COV App, the Swiss Army Knife for Verification

JasperGold COV App, the Swiss Army Knife for Verification
by Paul McLellan on 01-16-2014 at 12:55 am

At the Jasper Users Group meeting in October Rajeev Ranjan presented on the JasperGold COV App which he described as the Swiss army knife for verification. It comes in many sizes and contains many useful tools.

The primary goal of COV is to provide coverage metrics:

  • stimuli coverage: how restrictive is the design behavior under
Read More

New Frontiers in Scan Diagnosis

New Frontiers in Scan Diagnosis
by Paul McLellan on 01-03-2014 at 8:10 pm

As we move down into more and more advanced process nodes, the rules of how we test designs are having to change. One big challenge is the requirement to zoom in and fix problems by doing root cause analysis on test data alone, along with the rest of the design data such as detailed layout, optical proximity correction and so on. But without… Read More


SemiWiki 2013 in Review!

SemiWiki 2013 in Review!
by Daniel Nenni on 01-01-2014 at 9:30 am

This certainly was an interesting year. The fabless semiconductor ecosystem definitely got stronger and I see nothing but clear skies in 2014. Judging by the SemiWiki 2013 analytics and key search terms we all have an interesting year ahead of us with even more opportunities to grow and innovate. 2013 was also a year of growth and… Read More


2013 Awards, and the Winner is…Power

2013 Awards, and the Winner is…Power
by Paul McLellan on 01-01-2014 at 8:00 am

Of all the things that designers have to worry about in the power-performance-area (PPA) equation, the most challenging is power. SoCs have reached a point that we can put a lot of stuff on them, but if we are not careful we cannot light it all up at once. Dark silicon, where we put subsystems on a chip but then don’t have enough … Read More


ClioSoft at Arasan

ClioSoft at Arasan
by Paul McLellan on 01-01-2014 at 8:00 am

Arasan recently adopted ClioSoft for data management (DM) for design and development of Arasan’s Silicon IP products. This morning I talked to Erik Peterson, Senior CAD and Verification Engineer AMS Design about their experiences bringing up ClioSoft.

Data management infrastructure is critical with engineering projects… Read More