VLSI 2012 in Hyderabad

VLSI 2012 in Hyderabad
by Paul McLellan on 01-06-2012 at 3:59 pm

Atrenta will be on a panel session at VLSI 2012 next week in Hyderabad in the center of India. Since I had a development group there over a decade ago this is actually one of the few cities in India that I have visited. Beautiful but very hot at the time I was there.

Atrenta will be represented by Sathyam Pattanam the director of engineering… Read More


America Heads Into a Generational Turn

America Heads Into a Generational Turn
by Ed McKernan on 12-30-2011 at 7:24 pm

America has received a gift whose consequence and magnitude is just now unfolding before our eyes. Taken to its limits, it may in the course of the next decade finally free us from many of our foreign entanglements while lifting the economic burdens from the working majority that has seen their wages stagnate for the past 40 years.… Read More


Learning About MEMS

Learning About MEMS
by Daniel Payne on 12-12-2011 at 6:34 pm

My automobile has an air bag system that uses a MEMS (Micro Electro Mechanical System) sensor to tell it when to deploy, and I’ve read headlines talking about MEMS over the years so I decided it was about time to learn more by attending a Webinar on Wednesday, December 14th at 8AM Pacific Time.

The EDA company hosting the Webinar… Read More


Atrenta’s users. Survey says….

Atrenta’s users. Survey says….
by Paul McLellan on 12-09-2011 at 7:32 pm

Atrenta did an online survey of their users. Of course Atrenta’s users are not necessarily completely representative of the whole marketplace so it is unclear how the results would generalize for the bigger picture, your mileage may vary. About half the people were design engineers, a quarter CAD engineers and the rest … Read More


HSPICE – I Didn’t Know That About IC Circuit Simulation

HSPICE – I Didn’t Know That About IC Circuit Simulation
by Daniel Payne on 12-05-2011 at 11:14 am

HSPICE is over 30 years old, which is a testimony of how solid the circuit simulator has been and how widely used it is. To stay competitive the HSPICE developers have to innovate or the product will slowly loose ground to the many other simulator choices. I listened to the webinar last week to find out what was new with HSPICE.

SzekitRead More


A Review of an Analog Layout Tool called HiPer DevGen

A Review of an Analog Layout Tool called HiPer DevGen
by Daniel Payne on 11-28-2011 at 1:11 pm

My last IC design at Intel was a Graphics Chip and I developed a layout generator for Programmable Logic Arrays (PLA) that automated the task, so I’ve always been interested in how to make IC layout more push-button and less polygon pushing. Today I watched a video about HiPer DevGen from Tanner EDA and wanted to share what I … Read More


Not your father’s Tensilica

Not your father’s Tensilica
by Paul McLellan on 11-14-2011 at 5:27 pm

Tensilica has been around for quite a long time. Their key technology is a system for generating a custom processor, the idea being to better match the requirement of the processor for performance, power and area as compared with a fully-general purpose control processor (such as one of the ARM processors). Of course generating… Read More


Apache on the Road

Apache on the Road
by Paul McLellan on 10-19-2011 at 2:01 pm

There are lots of places that Apache is going to popping up in the next few weeks.

Firstly, Andrew Yang will deliver the keynote on October 24th at the Electrical Performance of Electronic Packaging and Systems (EPEPS) in San Jose. He will be talking about “Chip-Package-System convergence: bridging multiple disciplings… Read More


SoC Realization: Let’s Get Physical!

SoC Realization: Let’s Get Physical!
by Paul McLellan on 10-05-2011 at 1:41 pm

If you ask design groups what the biggest challenges are to getting a chip out on time, then the top two are usually verification, and getting closure after physical design. Not just timing closure, but power and area. One of the big drivers of this is predicting and avoiding excessive routing congestion, which is something that … Read More


Broadcom’s Bet the Company Acquisition of Netlogic

Broadcom’s Bet the Company Acquisition of Netlogic
by Ed McKernan on 09-12-2011 at 1:19 pm

I surmised a month ago that Broadcom could be a likely acquirer of TI’s OMAP business in order to compete more effectively in Smart Phones and Tablets. I was not bold enough. Instead, Broadcom has offered $3.7B for Netlogic in order to be an even bigger player in the communications infrastructure market by picking up TCAMs and a family… Read More