Mentor’s New Embedded Strategy

Mentor’s New Embedded Strategy
by Paul McLellan on 04-22-2013 at 2:01 am

If there is a trend I can detect in verification in 2013, it is taking verification environments and making the user interface, scripts, and tools work uniformly across the whole spectrum of possible verification “substrates” from virtual platforms, FPGA boards, emulation, actual chips, RTL simulation and so … Read More


Denali+Tensilica+Cosmic = Cadence

Denali+Tensilica+Cosmic = Cadence
by Paul McLellan on 04-17-2013 at 1:00 am

I won’t be able to attend Chris Rowen’s presentation here at the GlobalPress Electronic Summit since I’m going to the first day of the Linley Mobile Microprocessor conference. In fact I wonder if Chris himself will make it since he was running in the Boston marathon on Monday. He finished about 10 minutes before… Read More


Wally Rhines: Embedded Software the Next Revolution?

Wally Rhines: Embedded Software the Next Revolution?
by Paul McLellan on 04-16-2013 at 8:10 pm

As seems to be traditional, Wally Rhines gave a keynote here at the GlobalPress Electronics Summit here in sunny Santa Cruz. It was entitled Embedded Software, the Next Revolution in EDA. Unlike Cadence and Synopsys, Mentor has a strong position in embedded software. It has been build up over a long time through a series of acquisitions… Read More


Cavendish Kinetics

Cavendish Kinetics
by Paul McLellan on 04-16-2013 at 8:05 pm

I have spent the last couple of days at the GlobalPress Electronics Summit at the Chaminade Resort in Santa Cruz. Hey, it’s tough, but someone has to do it. One interesting presentation was from Cavendish Kinetics. It is especially interesting because many years ago Cavendish was founded by Mike Beunder, who I know well since… Read More


Xilinx: Hide the RTL

Xilinx: Hide the RTL
by Paul McLellan on 04-16-2013 at 7:30 pm

Tom Feist of Xilinx presented here at the GlobalPress Electronics Summit about their strategy to take design abstraction up another level. In the SoC world, we are still pretty much stuck at the RTL level and have moved to higher abstractions by using an IP strategy. But at least all IC designers are RTL-literate.


Xilinx, in the Vivado… Read More


Altera, Intel, TSMC, ARM: the Plot Thickens

Altera, Intel, TSMC, ARM: the Plot Thickens
by Paul McLellan on 04-16-2013 at 7:15 pm

Vince Hu of Altera presented us her at the GlobalPress Electronics Summit on their process roadmap. Since just a month or two ago they announced that Intel would be their foundry at 14nm, everyone wanted to get a better idea of what was really going on.

At 28nm, Altera use 2 processes, TSMC 28HP (for high end Stratix-5 devices) and TSMC… Read More