When I started in EDA the big three were Daisy, Mentor and Valid (DMV as we called them). Then came Synopsys in 1986 followed by Cadence, which was a clever merger between ECAD (Dracula DRC) and Solomon Design. Daisy and Valid were pushed aside and then there were, “Three dogs hovering over one bowl of dog food, not a pretty site.”… Read More
Artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms thirsting for higher performance per watt have driven the development of specific hardware design techniques, including in-memory computing, for system-on-chip (SoC) designs. In-memory computing has predominantly been publicly seen in semiconductor startups looking to disrupt… Read More
IDC has forecasted that over the next five years, the Global Datasphere — the amount of data that’s created, transferred over the network and stored each year — will increase by over 3X to 175 zettabytes (Figure 1). Much of this is driven by the Internet of Things (IoT), video applications (including video streaming,… Read More
Despite sounding like a minor enhancement version for USB, USB 3.2 introduces many important changes for the USB specification. To see where USB has come from and where it is going, it is essential to look at what is found in USB 3.2. The other salient point is that now the Type-C connector has split out from the underlying USB specification… Read More
Effective and efficient functional verification is one of the biggest hurdles for today’s large and complex system-on-chip (SoC) designs. The goal is to verify as close as possible to 100% of the design’s specified functionality before committing to the long and expensive tape-out process for application-specific integrated… Read More
Let’s face it, AI is everywhere. From the cloud to the edge to your pocket, there is more and more embedded intelligence fueling efficiency and features. It’s sometimes hard to discern where human interaction ends, and machine interaction begins. The technology that underlies all this is quite complex and daunting to understand.… Read More
With the announcement of early PDK availability for the 3nm GAA process node, designers are extremely interested in the characteristics of the new “gate-all-around” transistor structure and how it compares to the existing FinFET device. The GAA transistor has been denoted as a (horizontal) nanowire or nanosheet.
I will talk… Read More
You may remember Andreas from his time at Synopsys, where he led the new Software Integrity Business Unit. He joined Tortuga Logic a couple of months ago to lead the company. Given his background in software security, I was eager to get a CEO interview. Andreas is a EE with background at IBM in the PowerPC and EDA. He directed Cadence… Read More
Synopsys virtual events are high on my list for three reasons:
When USB initially came out it revolutionized how peripherals connect to host systems. We all remember when Apple did away with many separate connections for mouse, keyboard, audio and more with their first computers supporting USB. USB has continued to develop more flexibility and more throughput. In 2015 Apple again introduced… Read More
