System Level Formal

System Level Formal
by Bernard Murphy on 01-09-2018 at 7:00 am

Two recently announced vulnerabilities in major processor platforms should remind us that bugs don’t organize themselves to appear only in domains we know how to test comprehensively. Both Meltdown and Spectre (the announced problems) are potential hardware system-level issues allowed by interactions between speculative… Read More


What are you ready to mobilize for FPGA debug?

What are you ready to mobilize for FPGA debug?
by Frederic Leens on 12-04-2017 at 7:00 am

There are 3 common misconceptions about debugging FPGA with the real hardware:

[LIST=1]

  • Debugging happens because the engineers are incompetent.
  • FPGA debugging on hardware ‘wastes’ resources.
  • A single methodology should solve ALL the problems.
  • Read More

    Silicon Creations talks about 7nm IP Verification for AMS Circuits

    Silicon Creations talks about 7nm IP Verification for AMS Circuits
    by Daniel Payne on 10-24-2017 at 12:00 pm

    Designing at 7nm is a big deal because of the costs to make masks and then produce silicon that yields at an acceptable level, and Silicon Creations is one company that has the experience in designing AMS IP like: PLL, Serializer-Deserializer, IOs, Oscillators. Why design at 7nm? Lots of reasons – lower power, higher speeds,… Read More


    A better way to combine PVT and Monte Carlo to improve yield

    A better way to combine PVT and Monte Carlo to improve yield
    by Tom Simon on 10-11-2017 at 12:00 pm

    TSMC held its Open Innovation Platform Forum the other week on September 13[SUP]th[/SUP]. Each year the companies that exhibit at this event choose to highlight their latest technology. One of the most interesting presentations that I received during the event was from Solido. In recent years they have produced a number of groundbreaking… Read More


    Verification Trends: 2016

    Verification Trends: 2016
    by Bernard Murphy on 09-26-2017 at 7:00 am

    Periodically Mentor does us all a big favor by commissioning a survey of verification engineers across the world to illuminate trends in verification. This is valuable not only to satisfy our intellectual curiosity but also to help convince managers and finance mandarins that our enthusiasm to invest in new methods and tools … Read More


    Improved Memory Design, Characterization and Verification

    Improved Memory Design, Characterization and Verification
    by Daniel Payne on 09-19-2017 at 12:00 pm

    My IC design career started out with DRAM design, characterization and verification back in the 1970’s, so I vividly recall how much SPICE circuit simulation was involved, and how little automation we had back in the day, so we tended to cobble together our own scripts to help automate the process a bit. With each new process… Read More


    Webinar: Fast-Track to Riviera-PRO

    Webinar: Fast-Track to Riviera-PRO
    by Bernard Murphy on 08-11-2017 at 7:00 am

    Whether you’re right out of college, starting on your first design, a burn-and-churn designer thinking there must be a better way or an ASIC designer wanting to do a little prototyping, this webinar may be for you. It’s a fast start on using the Aldec Riviera-PRO platform for verification setup, run and debug, and more. There are … Read More


    Cadence Explores Smarter Verification

    Cadence Explores Smarter Verification
    by Bernard Murphy on 07-10-2017 at 7:00 am

    Verification as an effectively unbounded problem will always stir debate on ways to improve. A natural response is to put heavy emphasis on making existing methods faster and more seamless. That’s certainly part of continuous improvement but sometimes we also need to step back and ask the bigger questions – what is sufficient … Read More


    A Formal Feast

    A Formal Feast
    by Bernard Murphy on 03-29-2017 at 7:00 am

    It’s not easy having to deliver one of the last tutorials on the last day of a conference. Synopsys drew that short straw for their tutorial on formal methodologies at DVCon this year. Despite that they delivered an impressive performance, keeping the attention of 60 attendees who said afterwards it was excellent on technical content,… Read More


    DVCon San Jose February 27th – March 2nd

    DVCon San Jose February 27th – March 2nd
    by Bernard Murphy on 02-10-2017 at 7:00 am

    DVCon is fast approaching, less than 3 weeks away. As a verification geek, this must be one of my favorite conferences, so I’ll be there; you’ll see me at tutorials, presentations and wandering around the Exhibit hall. (Pictures here from the 2016 DVCon – many of the same attendees will be at this year’s conference after all :cool:)… Read More