A Brief History of Apache Design

A Brief History of Apache Design
by Daniel Nenni on 01-16-2013 at 3:00 pm

Apache Design Solutions was founded in 2001 by Andrew Yang and three researchers from HP Labs (Norman Chang, Shen Lin, Weize Xie). They realized that engineers striving to meet the goal of increased device miniaturization, as defined by Moore’s Law, would eventually hit stumbling blocks in their progress. The founding team believed… Read More


Is the RTL Design Flow Broken?

Is the RTL Design Flow Broken?
by Daniel Payne on 01-15-2013 at 11:02 am

I’ve taught Verilog classes and used logic synthesis tools for ASIC and FPGA designs, so was interested to hear about Oasys Design Systems. I attended their webinar at 9AM today, so I’ll share what I learned about their approach to logical and physical synthesis. This approach competes with tools like Design CompilerRead More


ESD Check Methodology

ESD Check Methodology
by Paul McLellan on 01-11-2013 at 5:12 pm

In Pune at the start of the month, Norman Chang, Ting-Sheng Ku, Jai Pollayil of Apache/Ansys and NVIDIA presented and ESD check methodologywith Fast Full-chip Static and Macro-level Dynamic Solutions . ESD stands for Elecro-Static Discharge and is basically injecting very high static voltages (think how your hand gets charged… Read More


Predictions are hard, especially about the future

Predictions are hard, especially about the future
by Paul McLellan on 01-11-2013 at 11:26 am

I was asked to make some predictions about the EDA, semiconductor and electronic systems markets for 2013. I decided that it would be more fun to make some plausible predictions, some of which will be right, rather than go for anodyne predictions (“Cadence will acquire a couple of startups”) which are uninformative,… Read More


Reducing Dynamic and Static Power in Memories

Reducing Dynamic and Static Power in Memories
by Paul McLellan on 01-10-2013 at 3:46 pm

Sequential approaches to power reduction work well on logic implemented using standard cells. But part of every SoC, sometimes a very large part, is taken up with embedded memories for which alternative approaches are required. Not only do these memories occupy up to half of the area they also account for as much as 75% of the power… Read More


Global Design Closure

Global Design Closure
by Paul McLellan on 01-09-2013 at 8:34 pm

Satish Soman, chief solutions architect at Atrenta, was invited to give a presentation on Global Design Closure at the VLSI India conference in Pune at the start of this month. He talked about the need to close the gap between the typical SoC development methodology and what happens in reality.


SoCs are really put together in two … Read More


Oasys RealTime Explorer

Oasys RealTime Explorer
by Paul McLellan on 01-09-2013 at 8:00 am

The current methodology in design in most companies, and certainly many of the biggest, is that front end RTL design is done by one team with a limited set of front-end design tools. This is then eventually passed off to the physical design team who run all the scripts, do the “real” synthesis, place & route and timing… Read More


Are you good at identifying languages? Win an iPad Mini

Are you good at identifying languages? Win an iPad Mini
by Paul McLellan on 01-03-2013 at 8:12 pm

Did you watch Atrenta’s holiday video (it’s only one minute)? Various Atrenta employees from all over the world wished you happy holidays in their own languages. Now Atrenta are having a competition. If you identify all the languages in the video then you can win an iPad Mini.

To enter the competition, or to view the … Read More


HiFi Mini, Always Listening

HiFi Mini, Always Listening
by Paul McLellan on 01-03-2013 at 10:28 am

Next week it is the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas and so there are announcements around the areas where consumer overlaps with semiconductor, which these days is primarily mobile. Then in February in Barcelona is Mobile World Congress, which is even more focused on mobile. Expect more announcementst there.

Currently… Read More


Happy New Year from SemiWiki!

Happy New Year from SemiWiki!
by Daniel Nenni on 01-01-2013 at 7:05 pm

It was an amazing year for SemiWiki and I would like to sincerely thank all who participated. SemiWiki traffic doubled again which is amazing in itself. SemiWiki membership more than tripled as we continue to add vertical markets (EDA, IP, Services, Foundry). More people are blogging on SemiWiki and the Forums and Wikis are coming… Read More