Bangers: the Best Beer Bar in Austin; Live Oak Brewing, the Best Beer in Austin

Bangers: the Best Beer Bar in Austin; Live Oak Brewing, the Best Beer in Austin
by Paul McLellan on 05-07-2013 at 8:10 pm

OK, enough with all this semiconductor geeky stuff. The important thing about DAC is…where to go to eat to avoid standard issue convention center chicken Caesar salad.

And a 7 minute walk from the convention center is Bangers Sausage House and Beer Gardenwhere you can have the $8 “executive” lunch consisting… Read More


The Capital Lite Semiconductor Model

The Capital Lite Semiconductor Model
by Paul McLellan on 05-07-2013 at 8:05 pm

For a couple of years the GSA has had working group looking at funding of semiconductor investment. There is a general feeling, which I share, that it is hard to get a fabless semiconductor company off the ground (nobody would dream of trying to create one with a fab these days) due to the size of the investment and the relatively long… Read More


Global Foundries Does DAC

Global Foundries Does DAC
by Paul McLellan on 05-07-2013 at 8:05 pm

Global Foundries will be at DAC in booth 1314. There will be 6 pods there demonstrating:

  • Advanced Technology: 28nm ready and ramping, and next is 20LPM and 14XM.
  • PDKs: For 28nm, 20nm and 14nm. 14nm handles FinFET enablement complexity. Robust, easy to use and high quality, supports pretty much the full range of EDA tools.
  • Design
Read More

A Brief History of Dassault Systèmes

A Brief History of Dassault Systèmes
by Paul McLellan on 05-07-2013 at 8:05 pm

Dassault Systèmes (DS) was created in 1981 when a small team of engineers were spun out of Dassault Aviation. They were developing software to design wind-tunnel models and so reduce the cycle time for wind-tunnel testing, using surface modeling in 3D instead. The company entered into a distribution agreement with IBM that same… Read More


Sandisk and NetworkComputer

Sandisk and NetworkComputer
by Paul McLellan on 05-07-2013 at 12:33 pm

Robert Veltman and Vikash Tyagi of SanDisk Corporation presented at SNUG a few weeks ago on their selection and use of RTDA’s NetworkComputer to manage their workflows.

Like everyone else, SanDisk has a high-performance computing farm (and like everyone else they are coy about how big it is) and lots of licenses for EDA tools,… Read More


Training Day at DAC

Training Day at DAC
by Paul McLellan on 05-07-2013 at 12:15 pm

This year for the first time the Thursday of DAC is tranining day. So that would be June 6th in Austin, of course. There are four tracks of training focused on SystemC, ARM Cortex and two on SystemVerilog, all areas of increasing use in SoC design, especially in mobile.

Each track of training is divided into two parts, one held from 9am… Read More


Agilent ADS Integrated with ClioSoft

Agilent ADS Integrated with ClioSoft
by Paul McLellan on 05-07-2013 at 4:00 am

I talked to Greg Peterschmidt of Agilent today about their integration of Advanced Design System (ADS) with ClioSoft’s SOS Design Data Management that was announced today. The integrated product is known as SOS viaADS. Greg is the ADS Product Planning Manager.

ADS is the market leader for design of very high frequency stuff… Read More


Atrenta at DAC…SpyGlass is Everywhere

Atrenta at DAC…SpyGlass is Everywhere
by Paul McLellan on 05-06-2013 at 6:43 pm

Atrenta are at booth 1847 in the exhibit hall where there will be regular presentations in the “RTL Signoff Theater” and lots of presentations on various aspects of SpyGlass, GenSys and BugScope in their suites. The registration page for the suite sessions is here. Just who is presenting in the RTL Signoff Theater … Read More


Mobile Storage Interfaces: There are a Lot

Mobile Storage Interfaces: There are a Lot
by Paul McLellan on 05-06-2013 at 5:39 pm

Storage interfaces for mobile are evolving rapidly, in particular with the Universal Flash Storage (UFS) standard. So how do you test a design? If you want to test a design that accesses, say, an SD card then you can wander into Fry’s and buy an SD card for a few dollars. But to design an interface to UFS is a bit harder since the … Read More


How to Blast Your Chip with High Energy Neutron Beams

How to Blast Your Chip with High Energy Neutron Beams
by Paul McLellan on 05-06-2013 at 3:49 pm

So you want to know how reliable your chips are and how susceptible they are to single event effects (SEEs) where a neutron or an alpha particle causes a storage element (flop or memory cell) to flip in a way that alters the behavior of the device. There are two ways a particle hitting a device might not cause a problem. Firstly, the particle… Read More