Finite element methods for analysis crop up in many domains in electronic system design: mechanical stress analysis in multi-die systems, thermal analysis as a counterpart to both cooling and stress analysis (eg warping) and electromagnetic compliance analysis. (Computational fluid dynamics – CFD – is a different beast which… Read More
AI is everywhere or so it seems, though often promoted with insufficient detail to understand methods. I now look for substance, not trade secrets but how exactly they using AI. Matt Graham (Product Engineering Group Director at Cadence) gave a good and substantive tutorial pitch at DVCon, with real examples of goal-centric optimization… Read More
Machine learning (ML) is finding its way into many of the tools in silicon design flows, to shorten run times and improve the quality of results. Logic simulation seemed an obvious target for ML, though resisted apparent benefits for a while. I suspect this was because we all assumed the obvious application should be to use ML to refine… Read More
There is no shortage of reporting on the many technological advances happening within the semiconductor industry. But sometimes it feels like we hear less in the area of semiconductor manufacturing equipment than in the design and product arenas. That doesn’t mean that there is less happening there or what is happening there … Read More
Advanced board designs are fertile ground for misbehavior in time and frequency domains. Relying on intuition, then waiting until near-final product for power integrity (PI) or EMI testing almost guarantees board respins are coming. Lumped-parameter simulations of on-board power delivery networks (PDNs) struggle with … Read More
A lot of folks in the semiconductor business are familiar with Dassault Systèmes because of their product life cycle management (PLM) products for IC design. They are, of course well known in other industries as well for their 3D modeling and simulation software. Over the years they have added capabilities and intelligence to … Read More
I recently watched a webinar titled “How to accelerate power-aware simulation debug with Synopsys’ VC LP” that was presented by Ashwani Kumar Dwivedi senior applications engineer at Synopsys. Watching the webinar made me reminisce how design verification has evolved over the years. A long time ago, static verification started… Read More
The idea of a digital twin is simple enough. You use a digital model of a car, aircraft, whatever to test design ideas and prove your design will be robust across a wide range of scenarios before you commit millions of dollars and lives to proving out the real thing. As Siemens have accomplished in their PAVE360 platform. There are a … Read More
These days the verification process starts right when the design process begins, and it keeps going well past the end of the design phase. Simulation is used extensively at every stage of design and can go a long way to help validate a design. However, for many types of designs, especially those that process complex data streams, … Read More
Synopsys just released a white paper, a backgrounder on CDC. You’ve read enough of what I’ve written on this topic that I don’t need to re-tread that path. However, this is tech so there’s always something new to talk about. This time I’ll cover a Synopsys survey update on numbers of clock domains in designs, also an update on ways to… Read More
