IoT Workshop in Beautiful Monterey California!

IoT Workshop in Beautiful Monterey California!
by Daniel Nenni on 03-27-2016 at 8:00 pm

It is that time of year again, the EDPS Workshop at the Tides Hotel in Monterey. This year will start out with a keynote on IoT from Serge Leef, VP of New Ventures and GM of the System-level Engineering Division at Mentor Graphics. Serge started his career at Intel followed by Microchip and Silicon Graphics. He has been at Mentor for … Read More


Mentor Extends Verification Offering!

Mentor Extends Verification Offering!
by Daniel Nenni on 03-14-2016 at 12:00 pm

With verification consuming more and more of the design cycle and the increasingly complex industry standard interfaces that are now common place, Verification IP (VIP) is again a trending topic. Back in my IP days the age old question was: Is it better to use VIP from the IP vendor? Because you know it will work, right? Or is it better… Read More


Mentor at DVCon – Visualize This

Mentor at DVCon – Visualize This
by Bernard Murphy on 03-10-2016 at 12:00 pm

Steve Bailey entertained us during lunch on Tuesday with a talk on debug and visualization in the Mentor platform. Steve is based in Colorado, so had to spend the first part of his talk gloating about their Super Bowl win, but I guess he deserves that.

On a more technical note, he showed us a familiar survey they had completed with the… Read More


Dr. Walden Rhines on the Past Present and Future!

Dr. Walden Rhines on the Past Present and Future!
by Daniel Nenni on 03-06-2016 at 7:00 am

Who can present seventy six slides in sixty minutes, still have time for questions, AND make it interesting? Dr. Walden Rhines that’s who. Here is a link to the presentation but I have to warn you, it is a 100MB PDF file:

Design Verification Challenges: Past, Present, and Future

The DVCon conference was well attended again this year… Read More


The Age of Automotive Electronics

The Age of Automotive Electronics
by Daniel Payne on 03-02-2016 at 12:00 pm

One of Intel’s most advanced fabrication sites is called Ronler Acres, located in Hillsboro, Oregon and I jumped at the opportunity to visit this site on April 26th when members from the SEMI Pacific Northwest Chapter are meeting to discuss a timely topic, “The Age of Automotive Electronics”. The previous … Read More


HW Emulator Apps Open Doors to Entirely New Uses

HW Emulator Apps Open Doors to Entirely New Uses
by Tom Simon on 02-28-2016 at 7:00 am

When the topic of hardware emulation comes up, thoughts of big iron customarily come to mind. However, hardware emulation has evolved significantly and now there are other important traits that distinguish the offerings in this area. For a very long period of time emulators provided primarily a method to accelerate gate level… Read More


Design Verification Challenges: Past, Present and Future!

Design Verification Challenges: Past, Present and Future!
by Daniel Nenni on 02-26-2016 at 7:00 am

Next week I will be at DVCON which is not to be confused with DEFCON the community of black and white hat hackers that challenge our online privacy on a daily basis. DVCON is the premier conference for the functional design and verification of our beloved electronic devices. The big draw next week of course is the keynote by Dr. Walden… Read More


Mentor ARM subscription signals ecosystem shift

Mentor ARM subscription signals ecosystem shift
by Don Dingee on 02-25-2016 at 4:00 pm

Since creating the landmark “all-you-can-eat” license with Samsung in 2002, ARM has inked several subscription deals with chipmakers and EDA firms. The latest ARM subscriber license deal just announced is for Mentor Graphics. What makes their strategy unique?… Read More


DDR4 is a complex interface to verify — assistance needed!

DDR4 is a complex interface to verify — assistance needed!
by Tom Dillinger on 02-16-2016 at 7:00 am

The design of parallel interfaces is supposed to be (comparatively) easy — e.g., follow a few printed circuit board routing guidelines; pay attention to data/clock/strobe signal lengths and shielding; ensure good current return paths (avoid discontinuities); match the terminating resistances to the PCB trace impedance;… Read More


How 16nm and 14nm FinFETs Require New SPICE Simulators

How 16nm and 14nm FinFETs Require New SPICE Simulators
by Daniel Payne on 02-07-2016 at 7:00 am

About 35 years ago the first commercial SPICE circuit simulators emerged and they were quickly put to work helping circuit designers predict the timing and power of 6um NMOS designs. Then we had to limit our circuit simulations to just hundreds of transistors and interconnect elements to fit into the RAM and complete simulation… Read More