I went to the second Global Technology Conference yesterday. It started with a keynote by Ajit Manocha who is the CEO of about 2 months. I hadn’t realized until someone asked him during the press lunch that he is technically only the “acting” CEO. Actually, given his experience he might be the right person anyway,… Read More
The economic news lately has been bleak. U.S. GDP grew at an anemic 0.4% in 1Q 2011 and 1.0% in 2Q 2011 – leading to increased concerns about a double-dip recession. High government debt levels in the U.S. and several European nations have contributed to volatile stock markets. The news does not seem to be any better for the semiconductor… Read More
Verifying circuits on advanced process nodes has always been difficult, and it’s no easier with today’s nanometer CMOS processes. There’s a great paradox in nanometer circuit design and verification. Designers achieve their greatest differentiation when they implement analog, mixed-signal, RF and custom … Read More
Introduction
Mentor Graphics and GLOBALFOUNDRIES have been working together for several generations since the 65nm node on making IC designs yield higher. Michael Buehler-Garcia, director of Calibre Design SolutionsMarketing at Mentor Graphics spoke with me by phone today to explain how they are working with GLOBALFOUNDRIES… Read More
There are a large number of challenges at 20nm that didn’t exist at 45nm or even 32nm.
The biggest issues are in the lithography area. Until now it has been possible to make a reticle using advanced reticle enhacement technology (RET) decoration and have it print. Amazing when you think that at 45nm we are making 45nm features… Read More
I have talked quite a bit over the last few years about how the trend towards small consumer devices with very fast ramp times. For example, pretty much any time Apple introduces a new product line (iPod, iPhone, iPad…) it becomes the fastest growing market in history. This has major implications for semiconductor design … Read More
Last month I had the pleasure of meeting Mr Wonyoung Kim, a PhD candidate from Harvard University. Like many candidates, Wonyoung is shopping his thesis for capital in hopes of starting a semiconductor IP company. Here is a brief summary of the technology, please provide appropriate feedback and let’s see if we can get him… Read More
I’ve blogged about the Calibre family of IC design tools before:
Smart Fill replaced Dummy Fill Approach in a DFM Flow
DRC Wiki
Graphical DRC vs Text-based DRC
Getting Real time Calibre DRC Results with Custom IC Editing
Transistor-level Electrical Rule Checking
Who Needs a 3D Field Solver for IC Design?
Prevention is Better… Read More
The webinar on CPS (chip-package-system) is on Tuesday 9th August at 11am Pacific time. It will be conducted by Christopher Ortiz, Principal Application Engineer at Apache Design Solutions. Dr. Ortiz has been with Apache since 2007, supporting the Sentinel product line. Prior to Apache he worked at Agere / LSI, where he investigated… Read More
The Totem webinar will be at 11am on Tuesday 2nd August. This session will be conducted by Karan Sahni, Senior Applications Engineer at Apache Design Solutions. Karan has been with Apache since 2008, supporting the Redhawk, Totem, Sentinel product lines. He received his MS in Electrical Engineering from the Syracuse University… Read More
