PowerArtist webinar

PowerArtist webinar
by Paul McLellan on 07-21-2011 at 3:21 pm

The next Apache webinar is on PowerArtist, RTL Power Analysis on July 26th at 11am Pacific time. The webinar will be conducted by David “Woody” Norwood, Principal Applications Engineer at Apache Design Solutions. David has been supporting RTL Power products for the past 8 years. He has broad EDA industry experience… Read More


Once Upon A Time… ASIC designers developed IC for Supercomputer in the 80’s

Once Upon A Time… ASIC designers developed IC for Supercomputer in the 80’s
by Eric Esteve on 07-07-2011 at 10:41 am

During last week-end, I had the good surprise to meet with one of my oldest friend, Eric, who remind me the old time, when we were working together as ASIC designers for… a Supercomputer project.

In France, in a French company (Thomson CSF) active in the military segment and being able to spend which was at that time a fortune ($25M) Read More


Apache Design Automation acquired by Ansys

Apache Design Automation acquired by Ansys
by Daniel Payne on 06-30-2011 at 2:52 pm

We all knew that Apache had filed for an IPO earlier and were just waiting for the timing and price to be revealed. Rumors have been circulating about an acquisition and today we know that the rumors were true asAnsys paid $310 million in cash for Apache.

Ansys stock has surged some 35% over the past twelve months:

Products
This acquisition… Read More


An Affordable 3D Field Solver at DAC

An Affordable 3D Field Solver at DAC
by Daniel Payne on 06-17-2011 at 6:35 pm

Intro
Massimo Sivilotti, Ph.D of Tanner EDA showed me their 3D field solver in the HiPer PX extraction tool at DAC last week.

Notes

Tool Suites – schematics, layout, SPICE simulation, DRC/LVS
– HiPer PX: 3D Field solvero Layers, dielectrics,
o Finite element analysis
o Boundary element methods
o 2D mode for pattern matching… Read More


EDA Interoperability at DAC

EDA Interoperability at DAC
by Daniel Payne on 06-17-2011 at 4:42 pm

Intro
My Wednesday breakfast at DAC last week was at the Interoperability event sponsored by Synopsys. The Synopsys moderator was so jovial that he reminded me of Jerry Lewis, I was relieved when the guests gave us an update.

Notes
Interconnect Modeling- Open Source Interconnect Technology Format (ITF)o Used by Star RC

–… Read More


Synopsys IC Validator at DAC

Synopsys IC Validator at DAC
by Daniel Payne on 06-14-2011 at 3:14 pm

Intro
At DAC last week I visited the Synopsys demo suite to see what’s new with IC Validator.


Notes
Stelios Diamantidis, PMM
– In-design physical verification
– Sign-off reveals thousands of late stage DRC violations
– 28nm has 1.5K rules, 15K runset sizes
– Metal Fill changes timing
– The… Read More


Physical IP Group at ARM

Physical IP Group at ARM
by Daniel Payne on 06-13-2011 at 5:45 pm

After lunch on Monday I met with John Heinlin, Ph.D. – VP Marketing of Physical IP Division

Back in the day I knew the founders of Artisan (VLSI Libraries) when we worked together at Silicon Compilers (Mark Templeton, John Malecki, Scott Becker).

Q: Do you favor any EDA tools for creating your IP?
A: No, we don’t really endorse a specific… Read More


Magma, ARM, GLOBALFOUNDRIES

Magma, ARM, GLOBALFOUNDRIES
by Daniel Payne on 06-06-2011 at 11:07 am

Introduction
Monday morning at DAC I attended the breakfast presentation from Magma, ARM and GLOBALFOUNDRIES. The 28nm node is ready for business using Magma tools and ARM libraries.

During breakfast I met Karim Arabi, Ph.D. from QualComm. He’s a senior director of engineering in San Diego and wanted to learn more about… Read More


Electro-static Discharge (ESD)

Electro-static Discharge (ESD)
by Paul McLellan on 05-18-2011 at 4:26 pm

Electro-static discharge (ESD) has been a problem since the beginning of IC production. Chips function on power supplies of up to a few volts (depending on the era) whereas ESD voltages are measured in the thousands of volts. When you reach out for your car door handle and a spark jumps across, that is ESD. If you were touching a chip… Read More