In last 30+ years, the electronic design industry has seen rapid changes more than any other industry. The change has taken place in the whole electronic ecosystem including semiconductor technology, transistor design, IC / SoC design, PCB, and system design. Today, a PCB can be very complex connecting several heterogeneous… Read More
Mentor Graphics’ User2User conference will be held next week on April 21[SUP]st[/SUP] at the San Jose DoubleTree Hotel. This one-day, free conference is the perfect opportunity to learn, network, and share with other Mentor Graphics users.
The day starts off with back-to-back keynotes that examine different aspects of the … Read More
Last month I was on my way to write a detailed article on important aspects to look at while designing an SoC. This was important in the new context of modern SoCs that go much beyond the traditional power, performance and area (PPA) requirements. I had about 12-13 parameters in my list that I couldn’t cover in one go, so I put the write-up… Read More
It was back in July of 2012 that the acquisition of Sigrity by Cadence was announced. Although Cadence is a dominant player in both IC and board layout tools, they did not have an electromagnetic (EM) signal integrity solution in their portfolio. This acquisition marks a turning point for the EM/SI sector – tight integration… Read More
Getting a printed circuit board from design and into production presents one of the biggest challenges in successfully launching a product. The designer’s job is to anticipate issues that can adversely affect PCB fabrication and assembly. Design rules and component libraries go part of the way, but there is a thicket of things… Read More
Last week my daughter was playing some games on my Google Nexus smartphone for a while when one of my friends called. When I picked up the phone, I couldn’t imagine it was so hot. There is no doubt; every electronic device today emits an order of magnitude higher heat than what it used to at most a decade ago. There is so much emphasis on … Read More
In today’s era of low power and high performance components, preferably on a single chip provides impetus to much larger electronic systems packaged into much smaller cases; smartphones are the immediate examples which encapsulate multiple functions other than the intended ones, viz. phone and data communication. As an example,… Read More
The benefits of using EDA software is that it can automate a manual process, like PCB timing closure, saving you both time and engineering effort. This point was demonstrated today as Cadenceadded new timing-closure automation to their Allegroproduct family, calling it Allegro TimingVision. On Tuesday I spoke with Hemant Shah… Read More
Calling all Mentor users! Don’t forget to register for the U2U in San Jose on Thursday, April 25.
In addition to three worthy keynotes, you will find a more interactive and solution-focused day than in the past. There are sessions on place & route, custom/AMS, emulation, test and yield analysis, functional verification, Calibre… Read More
In July Cadence acquired Sigrity, one of the leaders in PCB and IC packaging analysis. Until a decade ago, signal integrity and power analysis was something that only IC designers needed to worry about. For all except the highest performance boards, relatively simple tools were sufficient. Provided you hooked up the pins on all… Read More
