FinFET Modeling and Extraction at 16-nm

FinFET Modeling and Extraction at 16-nm
by Daniel Payne on 12-18-2012 at 12:05 pm

In 2012 FinFET is one of the most talked about MOS technologies of the year because traditional planar CMOS has slowed down on scaling below the 28nm node. To learn more about FinFET process modeling I attended a Synopsys webinar where Bari Biswas presented for about 42 minutes include a Q&A portion at the end.


Bari Biswas, SynopsysRead More


Learning about MEMS in Israel from: EDA companies, Foundry, University, Users

Learning about MEMS in Israel from: EDA companies, Foundry, University, Users
by Daniel Payne on 10-23-2012 at 12:24 pm

In April I attended and blogged about a webinar on MEMS and IC co-design hosted by two EDA companies: SoftMEMS and Tanner EDA. On October 30th you can attend a full-day event in Israel that is more comprehensive than the webinar that I attended.… Read More


SystemVerilog from Nevada?

SystemVerilog from Nevada?
by Daniel Payne on 08-16-2012 at 10:58 am

When I think of EDA companies the first geography that comes to mind is Silicon Valley because of the rich history of semiconductor design and fabrication, being close to your customers always makes sense. In the information era it shouldn’t matter so much where you develop EDA tools, so there has been a gradual shift to a wider… Read More


Genevi, isn’t that a city in Switzerland?

Genevi, isn’t that a city in Switzerland?
by Paul McLellan on 06-14-2012 at 8:05 pm

I got an email from Mentor Embedded this morning about a webinar on Implementing a GENIVI-compliant System. I have to admit I had no idea what GENIVI is, which surprised me. I spent several years working in the embedded space and so I usually have at least a 50,000 foot view of most things going on there. One reason for my ignorance is … Read More


IC design at 20nm with TSMC and Synopsys

IC design at 20nm with TSMC and Synopsys
by Daniel Payne on 05-02-2012 at 10:25 am

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While the debate rages on about 28nm yield at foundry juggernaut TSMC, on Monday I attended a webinar on 20nm IC design hosted by TSMC and Synopsys. Double Patterning Technology (DPT) becomes a requirement for several layers of your 20nm IC design which then impact many of your EDA tools and methodology.… Read More


Analog Circuit Optimization

Analog Circuit Optimization
by Daniel Payne on 04-18-2012 at 2:06 pm

Gim Tan at Magma did a webinar on analog circuit optimization, so I watched it today to see what I could learn about their approach. Gim is a Staff AE, so not much marketing fluff to wade through in this webinar.

The old way of designing custom analog circuits involves many tedious and error prone iterations between front-end (Schematic… Read More


MEMS and IC Co-design

MEMS and IC Co-design
by Daniel Payne on 04-10-2012 at 11:37 am

This morning I attended a webinar about MEMS and IC co-design from a company called SoftMEMS along with Tanner EDA. I learned that you can co-design MEMS and IC either in a bottom-up or top-down methodology, and that this particular flow has import/export options to fit in with your mechanical simulation tools (Ansys, Comsol, Open… Read More


How Co-design of MEMS-IC Saves Time

How Co-design of MEMS-IC Saves Time
by Daniel Payne on 04-04-2012 at 10:18 am

I learned about MEMS layout automation at a webinar in December and plan to attend another webinar next week on April 10thwhere two companies have created a MEMS-IC co-design flow, Tanner EDA and SoftMEMS. The big challenge is to ensure that the MEMS and electronic parts of a new design will simulate correctly before committing … Read More