Power and Reliability Challenges

Power and Reliability Challenges
by Paul McLellan on 10-23-2012 at 12:38 pm

Last week I attended the Ansys/Apache seminars on “Dimensions of Electronic Design.” The two big challenges as we go down to 28nm and 20nm and below are keeping power manageable and keeping reliability up.

The big challenge with power is that we can put so much stuff on a die and clock it so fast that the power is exceeding… Read More


A Brief History of Aldec

A Brief History of Aldec
by Daniel Payne on 10-20-2012 at 5:31 pm

Dr. Stanley Hyduke founded Aldecin 1984 and their first product was delivered in 1985, named SUSIE (Standard Universal Simulator for Improved Engineering), a gate-level, DOS-based simulator. The SUSIE simulator was priced lower than other EDA vendor tools from the big three: Daisy, Mentor and Valid (aka DMV). Aldec maintains… Read More


DAC: It’s the Last Week for Many Submissions

DAC: It’s the Last Week for Many Submissions
by Paul McLellan on 10-19-2012 at 2:36 pm

The deadline is coming up at the end of next week (technically on Monday October 29th for those of you who like real brinkmanship) for several aspects of DAC (not submission of papers for the conference itself) but most of the less academic-oriented things.

Proposals for:

  • Special Sessions
  • Tutorials
  • Panel sessions (in the conference
Read More

Virtuoso Has Twins

Virtuoso Has Twins
by Paul McLellan on 10-18-2012 at 6:01 pm

Cadence has apparently announced that going forward the Virtuoso environment is going to be split into two and offered as two separate code-streams, the current IC6.x and a new IC12.x. The idea is to introduce a new product with features that were specifically developed for new technologies such as double patterning aware layout… Read More


12m FPGA prototyping sans partitioning

12m FPGA prototyping sans partitioning
by Don Dingee on 10-16-2012 at 9:30 pm

FPGA-based prototyping brings SoC designers the possibility of a high-fidelity model running at near real-world speeds – at least until the RTL design gets too big, when partitioning creeps into the process and starts affecting the hoped-for results.

The average ASIC or ASSP today is on the order of 8 to 10M gates, and that includes… Read More


Current Timing Closure Techniques Can’t Scale – Requires New Solution

Current Timing Closure Techniques Can’t Scale – Requires New Solution
by Daniel Nenni on 10-16-2012 at 8:30 pm


There’s a nice article on timing closure by Dr. Jason Xing, Vice President of Engineering at ICScape Inc. on the Chip Design website. Not familiar with ICScape? Paul McLellan called ICScape the The Biggest EDA Company You’ve Never Heard Ofand Daniel Payne did Schematic, IC Layout, Clock and Timing Closure from ICScape atRead More


Laker3 in TSMC 20nm Reference Flow

Laker3 in TSMC 20nm Reference Flow
by Paul McLellan on 10-16-2012 at 8:10 pm

SpringSoft, soon to be part of Synopsys but officially still a separate company for now, just announced that Laker[SUP]3[/SUP], the third generation of their layout product family, is featured in TSMC’s 20nm Custom Reference Flow.

Laker 20nm advancements include new double patterning-aware design and voltage-dependent… Read More


Power Integrity Challenges for High Speed and High Frequency Designs

Power Integrity Challenges for High Speed and High Frequency Designs
by Daniel Nenni on 10-14-2012 at 8:30 pm

There is an interesting discussion on the LinkedIn SoC Power Integrity Group in regards to the power integrity challenges for high speed and high frequency designs. More specifically, the additional attention an on-chip power delivery network (PDN) requires as the operating frequency of ICs and SoCs increases.

The PDN has to… Read More


Advanced Node Design Webinar Series

Advanced Node Design Webinar Series
by Daniel Nenni on 10-14-2012 at 8:15 pm


At advanced process nodes, variation and its effects on the design become a huge challenge. Join Cadence® Virtuoso® experts for a series of technical webinars on variation-aware design. Learn how to use advanced technologies and tools to analyze and understand the affects of variation. We’ll introduce you to the latest Virtuoso… Read More