Mission-critical IC design for segments like automotive, aerospace, defense, medical and 5G have more stringent reliability analysis requirements than consumer electronics, and entails running special simulations for the following concerns:
Check this webinar out – Mediatek will share a novel approach to early IR drop estimation. Competition in system design has become even more intense because potential markets are huge and there are more players with deep pockets chasing those markets. Wherever you are in those value chains, you want to shift everything left to accelerate… Read More
There is a nice serendipity in discovering that two companies I cover are working together. Good for them naturally but makes my job easier because I already have a good idea about the benefits of the partnership. Synopsys and ANSYS announced a collaboration at DAC 2017 for accelerating design optimization for HPS, mobile and automotive.… Read More
This builds on a couple of topics I have covered for quite a while from an analysis point of view – integrity and reliability. The power distribution network and some other networks like clock trees are particularly susceptible to both IR-drop and electromigration (EM) problems. The first can lead to intermittent timing failures,… Read More
While it’s interesting to hear a tool-vendor’s point of view on the capabilities of their product, it’s always more compelling to hear a customer/user point of view, especially when that customer is NVIDIA, a company known for making monster chips.
A quick recap on the concept. At 7nm, operating voltages are getting much closer… Read More
Yesterday, Silvaco announced that it has acquired Invarian Inc. Details of the transaction were not disclosed.
Who is Invarian? They are a recognized leader in block-level to full-chip sign-off analysis for complex, high-performance ICs. Their unique methodology utilizes a parallel architecture and concurrent power-voltage-thermal… Read More
One of the big challenges in designing ICs today is designing a robust power net capable of delivering necessary current levels to all areas of the die. Getting it wrong can, of course, lead to circuit failures that range from non-functional silicon, through intermittent performance and functional problems, to early EM-driven… Read More
One of the big challenges in a modern SoC is doing an accurate analysis of the power nets. Different layers of metal have very different resistance characteristics (since they vary so much in width and height). Even vias can cause problems due to high resistance. Typically power is distributed globally on high-level metal layers,… Read More
You probably remember Cadence introduced Voltus towards the end of last year at their signoff summit. This was aimed at digital designers. Prior to that they had announced Tempus, their static timing analysis tool. More recently they announced Quantus QRC extraction. All of these tools that end in -us have been re-architected… Read More
In this age of SoCs with hundreds of IPs from different sources integrated together and working at high operating frequencies, FPGA designers are hard pressed keeping up the chip reliability from issues arising out of excessive static & dynamic IR drop, power & ground noise, electro migration and so on. While the IPs are… Read More
