Key Ingredients for ESL Power Modeling, Simulation, Analysis and Optimzations

Key Ingredients for ESL Power Modeling, Simulation, Analysis and Optimzations
by Daniel Payne on 03-07-2014 at 6:00 pm

There’s a French EDA company named DOCEA Powerthat is uniquely focused on power analysis at the ESL level and I had a chance to interview Ridha Hamza to get new insight on ESL design challenges and their approach. Ridha started out doing SRAM design at STMicroelectornics in the 1990’s, moved into the emerging field … Read More


Carbon Design Systems – Secret of Success

Carbon Design Systems – Secret of Success
by Pawan Fangaria on 02-19-2014 at 11:00 am


Last week, after learning from the press releaseof Carbonabout its rocking sustained growth with record-breaking revenue and a thumping 46% increase in bookings, I was interested to know some more details about what drives Carbon to such an amazing performance in an EDA market that is generally prone to growth of a few percentage… Read More


How to Design an LTE Modem

How to Design an LTE Modem
by Paul McLellan on 09-16-2013 at 4:24 pm

Designing an LTE modem is an interesting case study in architectural and system level design because it is pretty much on the limit of what is possible in a current process node such as 28nm. I talked to Johannes Stahl of Synopsys about how you would accomplish this with the Synopsys suite of system level tools. He is the first to admit… Read More


Electronic System Level: Gary Smith

Electronic System Level: Gary Smith
by Paul McLellan on 08-12-2013 at 5:07 pm

Gary Smith has been talking about how the electronic system level (ESL) is where the future of EDA lies as design teams move up to higher levels encompassing IP blocks, high level synthesis, software development using virtual platforms and so on. At DAC this year in Austin he talked about how the fact that EDA controls the modeling… Read More


Multi-level abstraction accelerates verification turnaround

Multi-level abstraction accelerates verification turnaround
by Pawan Fangaria on 05-02-2013 at 8:30 pm

Often a question is raised about how SystemC improves verification time when the design has to go through RTL in any case. A simple answer is that with SystemC, designs can be described at a higher level of abstraction and then automatically synthesized to RTL. When the hands-on design and verification activity is at a higher level,… Read More


Reduce Errors in Multi-threaded Designs

Reduce Errors in Multi-threaded Designs
by Randy Smith on 04-28-2013 at 1:00 pm

Many advanced algorithmic IPs are described in C++. We use this language because of its flexibility. Of course software algorithms are written to be executed on processors so they don’t solve all the issues of getting the algorithm implemented in hardware directly. This is not simply a high-level synthesis (HLS) issue. Usually… Read More


When installing a sink, it’s a lot faster to buy a saw

When installing a sink, it’s a lot faster to buy a saw
by Don Dingee on 04-25-2013 at 8:10 pm

Mentor’s announcement from Design West this week pretty much signals the end of standalone ESL tools, in favor of more useful stuff. They have pulled the pieces of their Sourcery CodeBench environment along with their embedded Linux offering and their Vista virtual prototyping platform into a native embedded software development… Read More


Forte Rises

Forte Rises
by Randy Smith on 04-23-2013 at 3:00 am

Over the past few months there has been a bit of back-and-forth concerning the 2012 market data indicating that Forte Designs Systems had taken over the top spot (by revenue) in the high-level synthesis (HLS) market (see stories hereand here). Having worked in this segment for Synfora as VP of Marketing, and as a consultant to AutoESL,… Read More


A bird told me the EDPS Monterey Conference was a great success

A bird told me the EDPS Monterey Conference was a great success
by Camille Kokozaki on 04-20-2013 at 8:10 pm

The 20th annual Electronic Design Process Symposium (EDPS) held April 18-19 at the Monterey Beach Hotel in Monterey California was an unqualified success. I know this because a bird (seagull?) sitting on the window sill of the conference room was so captivated by the fascinating insight provided by a number of luminaries that … Read More


How to make ESL really work – see EDPS

How to make ESL really work – see EDPS
by John Swan on 04-12-2013 at 6:53 pm

The Electronic Design Process Symposium (EDPS) is April 18 & 19 in Monterey. The workshop style Symposium is in its 20[SUP]th[/SUP] year. The first session is titled “ESL & Platforms”, which immediately follows the opening Keynote address by Ivo Bolsens, CTO of Xilinx.

In his keynote presentation Ivo will present how… Read More