At DAC in just three weeks you can learn about which EDA vendors are supporting the latest UVM 1.1d (Universal Verification Methodology) standard as defined by Accellera. One of those EDA vendors is Aldec, and they have a 45 minute technical session that you can register for online. Space will fill up quickly, so get signed up sooner… Read More
If we grew up in similar eras you will know Tektronix as a company that manufactures test and measurement devices. Every lab I was in during high school and college had Tek oscilloscopes and logic analyzers. At #50DAC however, attendees that visit Tektronix will experience firsthand RTL simulation-level visibility to multi-FPGA… Read More
Cliosoft was one of the first SemiWiki subscribers and it is a pleasure to work with them. They have one of the busiest landing pages with more than 30 articles authored by Daniel Payne, Paul McLellan, and myself. Srinath and I have lunch occasionally and exchange ideas, observations, and experiences:
Q: What are the specific design… Read More
Thirty years ago in 1983 Professor Daniel Gajski and Kuhn created the now famous Y-Chart to show the various levels of abstraction in electronic system design:
We can still use this Y-Chart today because it still pertains to how engineers are doing their SoC designs. Along the Behavioral axis there is a need to know that each level… Read More
Much awaited, automatic tool for DRM (Design Rule Manual) and DRC (Design Rule Check) deck creation is here now! I am particularly excited to know about this because I had been hearing for its need (in different context) from the designers with whom I was working to improve their design productivity through the use of our EDA tools… Read More
As Julius Caesar said, “Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres.” All Gaul is divided into 3 parts. Calypto is similar with three product lines that work together to provide a system level approach to SoC design. Two of those product lines are not unique, in the sense that similar capabilities are available from a handful… Read More
Most SoCs today are being prototyped in FPGA hardware before committing to costly IC fabrication. You could just design and build your own FPGA prototyping system, or instead choose something off the shelf and then concentrate on your core competence of SoC design.
Thanks to the FPGA vendors like Xilinx we now have FGPA prototyping… Read More
The tremendous growth in IC and SoC design complexity has now enabled engineers to place bilions of transistors on a single chip. To make that growth possible design teams resort to using libraries and semi IP provided by other groups in their company, or outside IP vendors. To lower risk, you must know that the IP being used in your… Read More
Sean Dart’s first DAC (Las Vegas) was as a customer in 1989. Designs were hitting 15,000 gates back then so he was looking for better schematic editors and simulators for gate level design. Fast forward 25 years and Sean’s customers are doing 15,000,000 gate subsystems and that number is growing steadily every year.… Read More
As an applications engineer for over 15 years supporting physical design tools that enable implementation closure, I have seen the complexity of timing closure grow continuously from one process node to the next. At 28nm, the number of scenarios for timing sign-off has increased to the extent that is way beyond the number that … Read More
