Making Functional Simulation Faster with a Parallel Approach

Making Functional Simulation Faster with a Parallel Approach
by Daniel Payne on 02-14-2017 at 12:00 pm

I’ll never forgot working at Intel on a team designing a graphics chip when we wanted to simulate to ensure proper functionality before tapeout, however because of the long run times it was decided to make a compromise to speed things up by reducing the size of the display window to just 32×32 pixels. Well, when first silicon… Read More


RTL Design Restructuring Explained

RTL Design Restructuring Explained
by Daniel Payne on 09-22-2016 at 4:00 pm

Modern SoC designs can use billions of transistors where transistors are grouped into gates, then gates grouped into cells, then cells grouped into blocks, blocks grouped into modules, and so on, creating a complex hierarchy. What a front-end designer conceives of logically for a hierarchy will differ from how an optimized physical… Read More


Dragging RTL Creation into the 21st Century

Dragging RTL Creation into the 21st Century
by Bernard Murphy on 07-29-2016 at 7:00 am

When I was at Atrenta, we always thought it would be great to do as-you-type RTL linting. It’s the natural use model for anyone used to writing text in virtually any modern application (especially on the Web, thanks to Google spell and grammar-checks). You may argue that you create your RTL in Vi or EMACS and you don’t need no stinking… Read More


High Level Synthesis Update

High Level Synthesis Update
by Tom Dillinger on 06-29-2016 at 7:00 am

High-level synthesis (HLS) involves the generation of an RTL hardware model from a C/C++/SystemC description. The C code is typically referred to as abehavioraloralgorithmicmodel. The C language constructs and semantics available to architects enable efficient and concise coding – the code itself is smaller, easier to write/read,… 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


Predicting Lifetime of Analog ICs

Predicting Lifetime of Analog ICs
by Pawan Fangaria on 06-22-2015 at 12:30 pm

With the increase of transistors per unit area, high density interconnects and manufacturing variability at lower nodes, the electronic devices have become more vulnerable to failures. The devices that operate under extreme conditions such as automotive devices that operate at high temperatures need to be robust enough to… Read More


Successful Venture of an Indian Global VIP Company

Successful Venture of an Indian Global VIP Company
by Pawan Fangaria on 04-17-2015 at 10:00 am

It’s rare that we find a truly Indian-based company operating globally in the semiconductor space. Although the ‘gold rush’ towards IP development in the last decade initiated many IP start-ups in India, today we rarely find Indian IP company names which are shining in the global arena. The story of services companies is different,… Read More


Starvision Pro: Lattice Semiconductor’s Experience

Starvision Pro: Lattice Semiconductor’s Experience
by Paul McLellan on 04-09-2015 at 7:00 am

During SNUG I took the opportunity to chat to Choon-Hoe Yeoh of Lattice Semiconductor about how they use Concept Engineering’s Starvision Pro product. He is the senior director of EDA tools and methodologies there.

Lattice Semiconductor is a manufacturer of low-power, small-footprint, low-cost programmable logic devices.… Read More


A Comprehensive Automated Assertion Based Verification

A Comprehensive Automated Assertion Based Verification
by Pawan Fangaria on 02-13-2015 at 4:00 pm

Using an assertion is a sure shot method to detect an error at its source, which may be buried deep within a design. It does not depend on a test bench or checker, and can fire automatically as soon as a violation occurs. However, writing assertions manually is very difficult and time consuming. To do so require deep design and coding… Read More


Expert Tool to Easily Debug RTL and Reuse in SoCs

Expert Tool to Easily Debug RTL and Reuse in SoCs
by Pawan Fangaria on 12-16-2014 at 7:00 pm

SoC design these days has become a complex and tricky phenomenon involving integration of multiple IPs and legacy RTL code which could be in different languages, sourced from various third parties across the globe. Understanding and reusing RTL code is imperative in SoC integration which needs capable tools that can accommodate… Read More