Decisive Floorplanning for Faster Design Closure

Decisive Floorplanning for Faster Design Closure
by Pawan Fangaria on 01-18-2016 at 4:00 pm

Semiconductor design automation at system level is gaining its due importance today. It needs an effective, efficient, and seamless flow from system up to silicon. There is lot of effort going on for automating SoC design exploration at system level but that eventually stops at RTL; another level of flow automation takes over … Read More


Benefits of RTL Power Budgeting

Benefits of RTL Power Budgeting
by Daniel Payne on 07-15-2015 at 4:00 am

Only one company at the recent DAC conference and exhibit had a set of four interacting disciplines: Fluids, Structures, Electronics and Systems. Did you guess that the company was ANSYS? I get so IC focused at times that I almost forget that chips plug into boards, that boards become systems, and that systems drive and control mechanical… Read More


Physically Aware DFT Improves PPA

Physically Aware DFT Improves PPA
by Pawan Fangaria on 02-16-2015 at 7:00 pm

Introducing on-chip test circuitry has become a necessary criteria for an ASIC’s post manufacture testability. The test circuitry is usually referred as DFT (Design-for-Test) circuit. A typical methodology for introducing DFT circuit in a design is to replace usual flip-flops with special types of flip-flops called ‘scan… Read More


Finding Logic Issues Early that Impact Physical Implementation

Finding Logic Issues Early that Impact Physical Implementation
by Daniel Payne on 10-16-2014 at 7:00 am

Complex SoC project teams typically use a divide and conquer approach where specialized engineers work in separate domains, like front-end or back-end. The five major engineering tasks for IC design can be described as: RTL design, synthesis, floor planning, place and route, then finally design analysis.

What if you could detect… Read More


A Tool Conceived With Designers’ Input and Developed from Scratch

A Tool Conceived With Designers’ Input and Developed from Scratch
by Pawan Fangaria on 03-12-2014 at 10:15 am

If we look at the past, most of the EDA tools in the semiconductor design space have originated from a designers’ need to do things faster. Regardless of whether it is design exploration, manual design, simulation, verification, optimization (Power Performance Area – PPA) and many other steps in the overall design flow.… Read More