RTDA at DAC: Scale to Millions of Jobs

RTDA at DAC: Scale to Millions of Jobs
by Paul McLellan on 05-10-2012 at 7:00 pm

RTDA is all about enterprise level scalability. Their three main products all scale to be able to handle the most demanding needs of large companies with large farms of servers. Of course there are some new refinements too.

LicenseMonitor can scale to 70,000 simultaneous checkouts with 1 billion checkout records in the database.… Read More


Atrenta at DAC: Fast Lint, IP Kit and More

Atrenta at DAC: Fast Lint, IP Kit and More
by Paul McLellan on 05-09-2012 at 7:03 pm

Atrenta will have a new look this year at DAC. I’m not quite sure what that means but we’ll all just have to go along and find out.

They have three users talking about their use of Atrenta’s tools. All 3 of these presentations are in the user-track poster session on Tuesday June 5th 12.30-1.30pm in room 105 (which … Read More


Customers Talk About Reliability, Low-Power and 3D

Customers Talk About Reliability, Low-Power and 3D
by Paul McLellan on 05-09-2012 at 1:13 pm

At DAC in San Francisco this year, Apache once again have a mixture of presentations by customers on their use of Apache tools and presentations by Apache themselves on their products. Most of the customer presentations are given just once, but the product presentations are given multiple times over the three days.

I think one of… Read More


Sagantec Update: More EDA Consolidation!

Sagantec Update: More EDA Consolidation!
by Daniel Nenni on 05-08-2012 at 7:00 pm

Adding sophisticated 2D dynamic compaction technology to address 20nm and 14nm challenges. Santa Clara, California – May 3 ,2012 – Sagantec today announced that it has acquired Dutch startup NP-Komplete Technologies BV (Eindhoven, The Netherlands) for its physical design compaction and migration solutions based on a sophisticatedRead More


TSMC 20nm Challenges!

TSMC 20nm Challenges!
by Daniel Nenni on 05-06-2012 at 7:00 pm

Now that the 28nm challenges are dead
It is time to look ahead
The tabloid pundits may not agree
But Moore’s law again you will see
The semiconductor ecosystem is humming
(2X gate density -20%+ performance-20%+ power savings)
The 20nm design starts are coming!

Okay, I’m really bad at poetry. Gambling however, I do pretty well. Las… Read More


Formal Verification, there’s an App for that

Formal Verification, there’s an App for that
by Paul McLellan on 05-06-2012 at 6:00 pm

The success of Apple’s AppStore has made people aware that software doesn’t have to be delivered in a big monolithic lump. Indeed, going back a bit earlier, Apple’s iTunes store made people aware that you didn’t have to buy a whole album if you only wanted a track or two.

EDA applications in today’s… Read More


It is free after you pay for it and there is a one-time annual fee: The Case for FD-SOI

It is free after you pay for it and there is a one-time annual fee: The Case for FD-SOI
by Camille Kokozaki on 05-04-2012 at 7:09 am

In one of Portlandia’s TV program sketches, there is a funny interchange between a carrier salesperson and Fred Armisen (of SNL fame) who was trying to buy a phone. One chuckle line was a statement by the seller that the phone was free after paying for it and that there was a one-time annual fee. With this anecdote as a mental backdrop,… Read More


28nm Layout Needs Signoff Quality at Design Time

28nm Layout Needs Signoff Quality at Design Time
by Pawan Fangaria on 05-03-2012 at 8:30 pm

We are all aware that at 28nm and below several types of complex layout effects manifest themselves into the design and pose a herculean task, with several re-spins to correct them at pre-tapeout. It’s apparent that the layout needs to be correct by construction at the very beginning during the design stage.

Having worked at CadenceRead More


The Biggest EDA Company You’ve Never Heard Of

The Biggest EDA Company You’ve Never Heard Of
by Paul McLellan on 05-02-2012 at 8:30 pm

There’s this EDA company. They have over 100 tapeouts. They have a $28M in funding. They have 250 people. And you’ve never heard of them. Or at least I hadn’t.

They are ICScape. They started in 2005 with an investment from Acorn Campus Ventures and delivered their first product, ClockExplorer, in 2007 and their… Read More


Use a SpyGlass to Look for Faults

Use a SpyGlass to Look for Faults
by Paul McLellan on 05-02-2012 at 5:24 pm

There is a famous quote (probably attributed to Mark Twain who gets them all by default) “When looking for faults use a mirror not a spyglass.” Of course if you have RTL of your IP or your design then using a SpyGlass is clearly the better way to go. But it is getting even better since there is a new enhanced release, SpyGlass… Read More