Semiconductors Future Hinges on a Single Pillar

Semiconductors Future Hinges on a Single Pillar
by Pawan Fangaria on 01-03-2016 at 7:00 am

A unique phenomenon has started manifesting itself under the slew of mergers and acquisitions this year in the semiconductor landscape. This phenomenon is bound to intensify in the near future and would positions itself as a key factor for the future of the semiconductor industry. The winners and losers in the game would be determined… Read More


Leveraging HLS/HLV Flow for ASIC Design Productivity

Leveraging HLS/HLV Flow for ASIC Design Productivity
by Pawan Fangaria on 12-23-2015 at 12:00 pm

Imagine how semiconductor design sizes leapt higher with automation in digital design, which started from standard hardware languages like Verilog and VHDL; analog design automation is still catching up. However, it was not without a significant effort put in moving designers from entering schematics to writing RTL, which… Read More


Mentor 2014 Results

Mentor 2014 Results
by Paul McLellan on 02-27-2015 at 7:25 pm

Yesterday Mentor announced their quarterly results. Since their financial year is not aligned with the calendar year, this was also the end of their fiscal 2015. The quarter was an all-time record with revenues of $439M and (non-GAAP) EPS of $1.09. The year was also an all-time record with revenues of $1.24B and EPS of $1.77. Half… Read More


FinFET Designs Need Early Reliability Analysis

FinFET Designs Need Early Reliability Analysis
by Pawan Fangaria on 02-19-2015 at 9:30 pm

In a world with mobile and IoT devices driven by ultra-low power, high performance and small footprint transistors, FinFET based designs are ideal. FinFETs provide high current drive, low leakage and high device density. However, a FinFET transistor is more exposed to thermal issues, electro migration (EM), and electrostatic… Read More


Noise & Reliability of FinFET Designs – Success Stories!

Noise & Reliability of FinFET Designs – Success Stories!
by Pawan Fangaria on 11-01-2014 at 7:00 am

I think by now there has been good level of discussion on FinFET technology at sub-20 nm process nodes and this is an answer to ultra dense, high performance, low power, and billion+ gate SoC designs within the same area. However, it comes with some of the key challenges with respect to power, noise and reliability of the design. A FinFET… Read More


Know All About ESD and Save Your Chips & Systems

Know All About ESD and Save Your Chips & Systems
by Pawan Fangaria on 08-24-2014 at 7:30 pm

In this age of electronics, especially with so many different types of human held devices and more upcoming wearable devices, it’s utmost important to protect the massive circuitry inside those tiny parts in the devices from ESD related failures. The protection needs to happen at all stages – cells inside the chips, package… Read More


Electronic Thermal Management through Icepak

Electronic Thermal Management through Icepak
by Pawan Fangaria on 08-03-2014 at 8:30 pm

Last week my daughter was playing some games on my Google Nexus smartphone for a while when one of my friends called. When I picked up the phone, I couldn’t imagine it was so hot. There is no doubt; every electronic device today emits an order of magnitude higher heat than what it used to at most a decade ago. There is so much emphasis on … Read More


System Design: Turtles All the Way Down

System Design: Turtles All the Way Down
by Paul McLellan on 04-27-2014 at 7:34 am

According to Steven Hawking, Bertrand Russell once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun orbits around our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: “What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported… Read More


From Layout Sign-off to RTL Sign-off

From Layout Sign-off to RTL Sign-off
by Pawan Fangaria on 07-25-2013 at 5:00 am

This week, I had a nice opportunity meeting Charu Puri, Corporate Marketing and Sushil Gupta, V.P. & Managing Director at Atrenta, Noida. Well, I know Sushil since 1990s; in fact, he was my manager at one point of time during my job earlier than Cadence. He leads this large R&D development centre, consisting about 200 people… Read More


Xilinx: Hide the RTL

Xilinx: Hide the RTL
by Paul McLellan on 04-16-2013 at 7:30 pm

Tom Feist of Xilinx presented here at the GlobalPress Electronics Summit about their strategy to take design abstraction up another level. In the SoC world, we are still pretty much stuck at the RTL level and have moved to higher abstractions by using an IP strategy. But at least all IC designers are RTL-literate.


Xilinx, in the Vivado… Read More