Next Generation Formal Technology to Boost Verification

Next Generation Formal Technology to Boost Verification
by Pawan Fangaria on 06-08-2015 at 12:00 pm

With growing complexities and sizes of SoCs, verification has become a key challenge for design closure. There isn’t a single methodology that can provide complete verification closure for an SoC. Moreover creation of verification environment including hardware, software, testbench and testcases requires significant … Read More


Synopsys Software Integrity: Find All the Bugs

Synopsys Software Integrity: Find All the Bugs
by Paul McLellan on 05-29-2015 at 9:30 am

A couple of days ago Synopsys announced that they were acquiring Quotium’s product Seeker. This is an interactive application security testing (IAST) product. Synopsys are acquiring the product and the R&D team, not the whole of Quotium. The Seeker solution is a pioneering solution for IAST that helps businesses find high-risk… Read More


OneSpin Launchpad, the App Store for Formal Verification

OneSpin Launchpad, the App Store for Formal Verification
by Paul McLellan on 05-21-2015 at 7:00 am

Formal verification is qualitatively different from most other verification. A simulation can pass or fail. But while formal verification can prove that the circuit is correct, or incorrect, it can also return “not proven” which means either that the algorithms realized that they were not powerful enough to prove… Read More


A Comprehensive Power Optimization Solution

A Comprehensive Power Optimization Solution
by Pawan Fangaria on 04-20-2015 at 7:00 am

In an electronic world driven by smaller devices packed with larger functions, power becomes a critical factor to manage. With power consumption leading to heat dissipation issues, reliability of the device can be affected, if not controlled or the device not cooled. Moreover, for mobile devices such as smartphones or tablets… Read More


How Sonics Uses Jasper Formal Verification

How Sonics Uses Jasper Formal Verification
by Paul McLellan on 11-11-2014 at 7:00 am

The Jasper part of Cadence announced jointly with Sonics a relationship whereby Sonics uses JasperGold Apps as part of their verification. I talked to Drew Wingard, the CTO, about how they use it.

One way is during the day when their design engineers use Jasper as part of their verification arsenal. Interestingly it is the design… Read More


How to Reduce Maximum Power at RTL Stage?

How to Reduce Maximum Power at RTL Stage?
by Pawan Fangaria on 08-16-2014 at 8:30 am

Of course that reduction has to stay throughout the design cycle up to layout implementation and fabrication. Since the advent of high density, mega functionality SoC designs at advanced nodes and battery life critical devices played by our fingertips, the gap between SoC power requirement and actual SoC power has only increased.… Read More


Pizza con Questa

Pizza con Questa
by Paul McLellan on 07-30-2014 at 11:01 am

Last week I went to a lunch and learn at Mentor about their Questa formal product given by Kurt Takara. Like everyone else these days, Questa is packaged as a number of Apps for doing different tasks. Formal verification is different from other EDA tools in that different approaches can be used for different sub-tasks. There are three… Read More


Synopsys Revamps Formal at #51DAC

Synopsys Revamps Formal at #51DAC
by Paul McLellan on 06-30-2014 at 6:02 pm

Synopsys announced verification compiler a couple of months ago and dropped hints about their static and formal verification. They haven’t announced anything much for a couple of years and it turns out that the reason was that they decided that the technology that they had, some internally developed and some acquired, … Read More


Jasper at DAC

Jasper at DAC
by Paul McLellan on 05-20-2014 at 6:55 pm

Wait, didn’t Cadence just acquire Jasper. Why is there a Jasper at DAC post?

So the big event is lunch on Tuesday, on Treasure Island. For out of towners that is the island in the middle of the bay bridge (actually just half of it). Food trucks, awesome views of the bay, and really cool street performers. There will be street magic,… Read More


Cadence Acquires Jasper

Cadence Acquires Jasper
by Paul McLellan on 04-21-2014 at 4:06 pm

Cadence announced today that it is acquiring Jasper Design Automation for $170M in an all-cash offer. Jasper has $24M in cash so it is really an acquisition for around $145M. i think that is around 4X revenue but I only know rumors about Jasper’s revenue numbers.

All the big 3 already have their own formal technology but the … Read More