For quite a few years, John Cooley has hosted the Troublemaker Panel at DAC. The event consists of a panel of senior executives from the EDA industry. John Cooley asks his readers for “edgy” questions to ask the panelists and on event day, he does just that. Those with complete responses that are backed with real data from real customers… Read More
Tag: paul cunningham
Formal Acceleration on FPGA. Innovation in Verification
Extending hardware acceleration to formal verification is a powerful idea to extend hardware acceleration to a verification domain that has not got much attention for acceleration. Paul Cunningham (GM, Verification at Cadence), Raúl Camposano (Silicon Catalyst, entrepreneur, former Synopsys CTO and lecturer at Stanford,… Read More
Applying QED to Hardware Accelerator Verification. Innovation in Verification
QED (Quick Error Detection) can be a powerful complementary addition to verification but can be subject to size constraints. This month’s paper looks at a fix for that limitation. Paul Cunningham (GM, Verification at Cadence), Raúl Camposano (Silicon Catalyst, entrepreneur, former Synopsys CTO and lecturer at Stanford, EE292A)… Read More
Quantum Simulation Using Decision Diagrams. Innovation in Verification
Quantum gate simulation complexity explodes as qubit counts increase. One way to manage this complexity in simulation on classical computers is through use of decision diagrams in place of matrices. Paul Cunningham (GM, Verification at Cadence), Raúl Camposano (Silicon Catalyst, entrepreneur, former Synopsys CTO and lecturer… Read More
UX in Agentic Systems. Innovation in Verification
A switch this month to principles behind building effective agentic systems, going beyond simply a new way to stitch together tools, agents and orchestration, to deeper consideration of user experience and how we most effectively blend agentic with human-in-the-loop. Paul Cunningham (GM, Verification at Cadence), Raúl Camposano… Read More
Post-Silicon Validating an MMU. Innovation in Verification
Some post-silicon bugs are unavoidable, but we’re getting better at catching them before we ship. Here we look at a method based on a bare-metal exerciser to stress-test the MMU. Paul Cunningham (GM, Verification at Cadence), Raúl Camposano (Silicon Catalyst, entrepreneur, former Synopsys CTO and lecturer at Stanford, EE292A)… Read More
2025 Retrospective. Innovation in Verification
As usual in January we start with a look back at the papers we reviewed last year. Paul Cunningham (GM, Verification at Cadence), Raúl Camposano (Silicon Catalyst, entrepreneur, former Synopsys CTO and lecturer at Stanford, EE292A) and I continue our series on research ideas. As always, feedback welcome.
Looking back at 2025
… Read MoreSimulating Quantum Computers. Innovation in Verification
Quantum algorithms must be simulated on classical computers to validate correct behavior, but this looks very different from classical logic simulation. Paul Cunningham (GM, Verification at Cadence), Raúl Camposano (Silicon Catalyst, entrepreneur, former Synopsys CTO and lecturer at Stanford, EE292A) and I continue our… Read More
Agentic Bug Localization. Innovation in Verification
Bug localization continues to be a challenge for both bug triage and root-cause analysis. Agentic approaches suggest a way forward. Paul Cunningham (GM, Verification at Cadence), Raúl Camposano (Silicon Catalyst, entrepreneur, former Synopsys CTO and lecturer at Stanford, EE292A) and I continue our series on research ideas.… Read More
Emulator-Like Simulation Acceleration on GPUs. Innovation in Verification
GPUs have been proposed before to accelerate logic simulation but haven’t quite met the need yet. This is a new attempt based on emulating emulator flows. Paul Cunningham (GM, Verification at Cadence), Raúl Camposano (Silicon Catalyst, entrepreneur, former Synopsys CTO and lecturer at Stanford, EE292A) and I continue our series… Read More
