NanGate Launches Aggressive DAC Campaign: 50 Library Characterization Licenses for USD 50K

NanGate Launches Aggressive DAC Campaign: 50 Library Characterization Licenses for USD 50K
by Daniel Nenni on 05-30-2013 at 12:00 pm

NanGate today announced a very aggressive “50-50 campaign”. Throughout June and July and in celebration of DAC 50th anniversary, NanGate will be offering 50 licenses of its Library Characterizer™ product for USD 50K for the first year. The offer applies to new customers as well as to existing customers that do not yet license the… Read More


2013 semcionductor market forecast lowered to 6% from 7.5%

2013 semcionductor market forecast lowered to 6% from 7.5%
by Bill Jewell on 05-30-2013 at 9:00 am

The global semiconductor market was weaker than expected in 1Q 2013, down 4.5% from 4Q 2012 according to WSTS. Much of the softnes was attributable to a major falloff in the PC market. According to International Data Corporation (IDC), 1Q 2013 PC shipments were down 15% from 4Q 2012 and down 14% from 1Q 2012. Other key end markets remained… Read More


Atrenta: Mentor/Spyglass Power Signoff…and a Book

Atrenta: Mentor/Spyglass Power Signoff…and a Book
by Paul McLellan on 05-30-2013 at 7:00 am

Today Atrenta and Mentor announced that they were collaborating to enable accurate, signoff quality power estimation at the RTL for entire SoCs. The idea is to facilitate RTL power estimation for designs of over 50M gates running actual software loads over hundreds of millions of cycles, resulting in simulation datasets in the… Read More


Sagantec’s nmigrate adopted and deployed for 14nm technology

Sagantec’s nmigrate adopted and deployed for 14nm technology
by Daniel Nenni on 05-29-2013 at 3:00 pm

Major semiconductor company successfully migrated 28nm libraries to 14nm FinFET

Santa Clara, California – May 29, 2013 – Sagantec announced that its nmigrate tool was adopted by a major semiconductor company for the development of standard cell libraries at 14nm and 16nm FinFET technologies.
This customer already… Read More


RTL Signoff Theater

RTL Signoff Theater
by Paul McLellan on 05-29-2013 at 11:00 am

We have talked for years about RTL signoff, the idea that a design could be finalized at the RTL level and then most of the signoff would take place there. Then the design would be passed to a physical implementation team who would not expect to run into any problems (such as routing congestion, missing the power budget or similar problems).… Read More


Barbecue at DAC

Barbecue at DAC
by Paul McLellan on 05-28-2013 at 1:55 pm

I already wrote about Franklin Barbecue, by some rankings the best in the whole country. If you want to go there you must be there early. They start serving at 11am and run out of food around 1pm. Closed on Monday.

But there are other barbecue and similar places near the convention center. Since I’m not an Austin native (we’ll… Read More


IROC Technologies CEO on Semiconductor Reliability

IROC Technologies CEO on Semiconductor Reliability
by Daniel Nenni on 05-26-2013 at 8:10 pm

One of the best things about being part of SemiWiki is the exposure to new technologies and the people behind them. SemiWiki now works with more than 35 companies and I get to spend time with each and every one of them. Much like I do, IROC Technologies works closely with the foundries and the top semiconductor companies so it was a pleasure… Read More


The History of Arasan Chip Systems

The History of Arasan Chip Systems
by Sam Beal on 05-26-2013 at 8:05 pm

In 2002 few people outside of Steve Jobs, could have predicted the iPhone. But a forward-looking technology CEO could expect Moore’s Law to extend into portable devices as it did with PCs. While 2G and 2.5G cellular phones were shipping in the hundreds of millions, the features were rather primitive. 3G, 4G, WiFi, Bluetooth,… Read More


Interview with Forte CTO John Sanguinetti on Cynthesizer 5

Interview with Forte CTO John Sanguinetti on Cynthesizer 5
by Randy Smith on 05-26-2013 at 12:00 pm

Recently, Forte Design Systems announced the release of a new core engine to their popular high-level synthesis tool offering. It is a large undertaking, so I asked John Sanguinetti, Forte’s CTO, to answer some questions about that development effort.

Q. How long has it been since the last major upgrade of the CynthesizerRead More


Avoiding layout related variability issues

Avoiding layout related variability issues
by Daniel Nenni on 05-26-2013 at 7:55 am

In advanced process technologies, electrical and timing problems due to variability can become a big issue. Due to various processing effects, a circuit performance (both speed and power) is dependent on specific layout attributes and can vary a lot from instance to instance. The accumulated effects can be severe to the point… Read More