Tuning Analog IP for High Yield at SMIC

Tuning Analog IP for High Yield at SMIC
by Daniel Payne on 12-29-2015 at 12:00 pm

Analog IP is more difficult to design and optimize for a given process node compared to digital IP, so any automation for analog designers is always welcome. The engineers at SMIC in China have customers that design analog IP and often they need to know how to optimize it for a specific process, so I watched a presentation by Josh Yang,… Read More


Variation Aware FinFETs are Critical!

Variation Aware FinFETs are Critical!
by Daniel Nenni on 12-18-2015 at 4:00 pm

As I mentioned in “EDA Dead Pool” acquisitions in our industry will continue at a rapid pace. The latest victim is 10 year old French company Infiniscale who was recently purchased by Silvaco. This was more of a “let’s put your product through our massive sales and support channel” kind of deal so it will be 1 + 1 = 3 accretive for sure.… Read More


Design and Optimization of Analog IP is Possible

Design and Optimization of Analog IP is Possible
by Daniel Payne on 12-04-2015 at 7:00 am

Designing Analog IP is often referred to as a “black art”, something that only highly experienced craftsmen can produce using transistor-level techniques that aren’t shared outside of their closely held group of trusted co-workers. I’d like to suggest that Analog IP can be designed and optimized … Read More


12 Reasons to Attend this Annual User Group Meeting for Transistor-level IC Designers

12 Reasons to Attend this Annual User Group Meeting for Transistor-level IC Designers
by Daniel Payne on 10-07-2015 at 7:00 am

My first job out of college was transistor-level circuit design of DRAMs at Intel, so I’ve continued to be fascinated with both the craft and science of designing, optimizing, verifying and debugging custom ICs. Last October I traveled to Munich, Germany to attend a two day user group meeting for engineers using tools from… Read More


Optimizing SRAM IP for Yield and Reliability

Optimizing SRAM IP for Yield and Reliability
by Daniel Payne on 08-31-2015 at 12:00 pm

My IC design career started out with DRAM at Intel, and included SRAM embedded in GPUs, so I recall some common questions that face memory IP designers even today, like:

  • Does reading a bit flip the stored data?
  • Can I write both 0 and 1 into every cell?
  • Will read access times be met?
  • While lowering the supply voltage does the cell data retain?
Read More

When it comes to High-Sigma verification, go for insight, accuracy and performance

When it comes to High-Sigma verification, go for insight, accuracy and performance
by Michael Pronath on 07-04-2015 at 7:00 am

There are three critical goals that designers of custom digital designs and memories look to achieve with high sigma verification:

(1) obtaining accurate results,
(2) achieving results with good run-time (efficiency), and
(3) gaining proper insight into how their circuit is behaving along with an understanding of failure … Read More


Unlock the Key to Ultra-Low Power Design

Unlock the Key to Ultra-Low Power Design
by Tom Simon on 06-20-2015 at 7:00 am

We have been hearing about low power for a long time. Fortunately, low power chip operation has come about through a large number of innovations. Key among these is clock gating, frequency and voltage scaling, managing leakage with lower threshold voltage, HKMG, and many other techniques. But we are entering the age of ultra low… Read More


WLAN Design Optimization at Lantiq

WLAN Design Optimization at Lantiq
by Daniel Payne on 01-02-2015 at 7:00 am

Right now I’m typing on my MacBook Pro computer connected to the Internet through WiFi, thanks to the electronics in both my laptop and WiFi router. I kind of take WiFi for granted because it is so ubiquitous throughout my daily life, yet there are IC designers at companies like Lantiq Semiconductorthat have to design and optimize… Read More


Transistor-Level IC Design is Alive and Thriving

Transistor-Level IC Design is Alive and Thriving
by Daniel Payne on 11-26-2014 at 7:00 am

There’s much talk in EDA about High Level Synthesis (HLS), Transaction Level Modeling (TLM) and the Universal Verification Methodology (UVM), however there’s a lower-level of abstraction, the transistor-level, where high-speed digital cell libraries are created, analog circuits are crafted, and AMS designers… Read More


Debugging a 10 bit SAR ADC

Debugging a 10 bit SAR ADC
by Daniel Payne on 10-31-2014 at 4:00 pm

SMIC (Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation) is a China-based foundry with technology ranging from 0.35 micron to 28 nm, and we’ve blogged about them before on SemiWiki. I’ve been reading about SMIC recently because they created a technical presentation for the MunEDA Technical Forum Shanghai… Read More