IP Wanna Go Fast, Core Wanna Not Rollover

IP Wanna Go Fast, Core Wanna Not Rollover
by Don Dingee on 08-23-2012 at 8:15 pm

At a dinner table a couple years ago, someone quietly shared their biggest worry in EDA. Not 2GHz, or quad core. Not 20nm, or 450mm. Not power, or timing closure. Call it The Rollover. It’s turned out to be the right worry.

Best brains spent inordinate hours designing and verifying a big, hairy, heavy breathing processor core to do … Read More


Shorter, better and easier PCIe and NVM Express Verification flow with advanced technologies

Shorter, better and easier PCIe and NVM Express Verification flow with advanced technologies
by Eric Esteve on 07-19-2012 at 8:05 pm

We have talked about Cadence subsystem IP strategy, illustrated by NVM Express subsystem IP, in a previous blog. What we said was that “A subsystem IP based approach will also speed up the software development and validation phase: if the IP provider is able to propose the right tools, like the associated Verification IP (VIP), … Read More


Scoreboards and Results Predictors in UVM

Scoreboards and Results Predictors in UVM
by Daniel Nenni on 07-15-2012 at 10:56 am

If verification is the art of determining that your design works correctly under all specified conditions, then it is imperative that we are able to create an environment that can tell you if this is truly the case.

Scoreboards are verification components that determine that the DUT is working correctly, including ensuring that… Read More


How many languages an Engineer should speak?

How many languages an Engineer should speak?
by ahmed.shahein on 06-08-2012 at 9:37 am

I speak VHDL and SystemC, others speak Verilog and SystemVerilog … what do you speak?

Before getting into the core of the topic let me give you some round figures, engineers love numbers. Julian Lonsdale “European Sales Manager at Aldec” informed me at the Xfest Munich last month that Aldec carried out a survey to evaluate the usage… Read More


Achieving Rapid Verification Convergence of ARM® AMBA® 4 ACE™ Designs using Discovery™ Verification IP

Achieving Rapid Verification Convergence of ARM® AMBA® 4 ACE™ Designs using Discovery™ Verification IP
by Eric Esteve on 05-07-2012 at 3:17 am

Synopsys is consolidating the company positioning on Verification IP. We have announced the launch of Discovery VIP in Semiwiki, in February this year, and we have commented about the acquisition of nSys and ExpertIO in January. This webinar, “Achieving Rapid Verification Convergence of ARM® AMBA® 4 ACE™ Designs using Discovery™… Read More


Mentor’s New Emulator

Mentor’s New Emulator
by Paul McLellan on 04-25-2012 at 8:00 am

Mentor announced the latest version of their Veloce emulator at the Globalpress briefing in Santa Cruz. The announcement is in two parts. The first is that they have designed a new custom chip with twice the performance and twice the capacity. It supports up to two billion gate designs and many software engineers. Surprisingly … Read More


Kathryn Kranen Interview in San Jose Mercury News

Kathryn Kranen Interview in San Jose Mercury News
by Paul McLellan on 03-07-2012 at 1:22 pm

There is an interview in the San Jose Mercury News with Kathryn Kranen, Jasper’s CEO. Of course the Mercury is a general newspaper and can’t expect most of its readership to have a clue what EDA is, never mind formal verification. It’s a similar problem to the one we all have when we try and explain to our families… Read More


Verdi’s 3rd Symphony

Verdi’s 3rd Symphony
by Paul McLellan on 03-05-2012 at 7:00 am

The first version of the debug platform Verdi (then called Debussy) dates back to 1996 over 15 years ago. The second version was released in 2002. And now SpringSoft is releasing the 3rd version Verdi[SUP]3[/SUP]which is a completely new generation. A tool environment like Verdi seems to need to be completely refreshed about every… Read More


Challenges in 3D-IC and 2½D Design

Challenges in 3D-IC and 2½D Design
by Paul McLellan on 12-09-2011 at 5:18 pm

3D IC design and what has come to be known as 2½D IC design, with active die on a silicon interposer, require new approaches to verification since the through silicon vias (TSVs) and the fact that several different semiconductor processes may be involved create a new set of design challenges

The power delivery network is a challenge… Read More


Formally verifying protocols

Formally verifying protocols
by Paul McLellan on 11-15-2011 at 1:19 pm

I attended much of the Jasper users’ group a week ago. There were several interesting presentations that I can’t just blog about because companies are shy, and some that would only be of interest if you were a user of Jasper’s products on a daily basis.

But for me the most interesting presentations were several… Read More