One challenge with security in systems is to ensure that there are not backdoors, either accidentally or maliciously inserted. Intel, ARM and others have various forms of trusted execution technology. Under the hood these are implemented by dividing the design into two parts, normal and secure, and implementing them with physical… Read More
Wanna become the double patterning guru at your company? David Abercrombie, DFM Program Manager for Calibre, has written a series of articles detailing the multifaceted impacts of double patterning on advanced node design and verification. For designers struggling to understand the complexity and nuances of double patterning,… Read More
One of the decisions that needs to be made when using high-level synthesis (HLS) in general and Catapult in particular is what language to use as input. The choice is C++ or SystemC. Of course at some level SystemC is C++ with added libraries and templates, but in fact the semantics of the two languages end up being very different.
The… Read More
I reviewed the book Mixed-Signal Methodology Guidein August of this year published by Cadence, and decided to follow up with one of the authors, Michael Henrie from ClioSoft, to learn more about the importance of Design Management for AMS. Michael is a Software Engineering Manager at ClioSoft and has worked at Zarlink Semi, Legerity,… Read More
It seems that Ateris vs. Sonics war, initiated by Sonics in 2010 on the legal battle field, is now continuing on the marketing field, as far as I am concerned, I prefer the latter, as I am an engineer and not a lawyer, and I must say that playing in the marketing allow both companies to extract the most attractive features of their products.… Read More
ST Microelectronics announced yesterday that it would have a conference call on December 10th to announce its strategy going forward. ST has been struggling the last couple of years, with revenues down year to year. From 2010-2012 (the last an estimate of course) it did $10.3B, $9.6B and $8.4B so it has shrunk nearly 20% in 3 years.… Read More
LTE (Long Term Evolution) is the true 4G standard for cellular and, over time, wireless internet. In fact it is several different standards with different levels of performance. LTE will eventually be the only technology used in cellular, voice will simply be Voice-over-IP (VoIP, the same technology that companies like Skype… Read More
Calypto has an interesting webinar coming up about Minimizing RTL Power Through Sequential Analysis. It is next Tuesday December 4th at 11am.
Insert standard paragraph about how power is the new timing, everyone worries about power, battery life in smartphones, half-empty datacenters.
You probably already know about clock… Read More
Today’s Dilbert cartoon is about how anybody can build a smart phone. As if it was a technical problem these days. But back in the mid-90s it really was. All the contract manufacturers like Solectron and others figured that since they could build a PC they could build a phone. It turned out that building radios was really hard.… Read More
Collaboration in EDA is nothing new, however you may not be aware of how the Dini Group and Tektronix have worked together on an FPGA prototyping platform to address issues like debugging with full visibility across an entire multi-FPGA design. At SemiWiki we’ve blogged a couple of times so far about the new debug approach… Read More
