Author's Latest Posts


Standard Time And The Day Of Two Noons


Many of you know that I have a kind of fascination with dates, times and the way they have changed over time. Everyone measured time by using the sun 150 years ago, and while this may not have been highly accurate – well, who cared? Farmers got up when the sun rose and did their stuff until the sun set. Most people had no need for time and the idea of a watch would have been..well…untimely.... » read more

Are Models Holding Back New Methodologies?


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss the state of the industry for [getkc id="101" kc_name="modeling"] at abstractions above [getkc id="49" kc_name="RTL"], a factor which has delayed adoption of [getkc id="104" kn_name="virtual prototypes"] and the proliferation of system-level design and hardware/software codesign. Taking part in the discussion were Frank Schirrmeister, group director... » read more

Are More Processor Cores Better?


Up until the early 2000s, each generation of processor was faster, used more exotic architectures, had deeper pipelines, used more transistors, ran at higher clock frequencies and consumed more power. In fact power was rising faster than performance and led to the extrapolation that within a few generations, processors would run as hot as nuclear reactors. Something had to change, and that c... » read more

Keeping Up With The Productivity Challenge


Until recently, EDA software rode the coattails of increasing processor performance as part of its drive to continue providing faster and more powerful development software to the people designing, among other things, the next generation of faster processors. It was a fortuitous ring. Around the turn of the century, with the migration to multi-core computing systems, all of that changed. In ord... » read more

A Formally Free Lunch


I am sure many of you can remember the successful events staged by [getperson id="11679" p_name="Eric Hennenhofer"], founder and CEO of [getentity id="22813" comment="Obsidian Software"]. While neither his name nor that of his company may be on the tip of your tongue, DVClub might ring a few more bells. He started it so that he could have a place to meet fellow engineers while enjoying a free l... » read more

Tech Talk: Formal Verification


Praveen Tiwari, senior R&D manager for verification at Synopsys, talks with Semiconductor Engineering about when to use formal verification, why it isn't limited to small parts of the design, how to reduce complexity, bounded proofs, and bug hunting. [youtube vid=v8CoIAWU1XA] » read more

Are Models Holding Back New Methodologies?


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss the state of the industry for [getkc id="101" kc_name="modeling"] at abstractions above [getkc id="49" kc_name="RTL"], a factor which has delayed adoption of [getkc id="104" kn_name="virtual prototypes"] and the proliferation of system-level design and hardware/software codesign. Taking part in the discussion were Frank Schirrmeister, group director... » read more

Memory Directions Uncertain


Semiconductor Engineering sat down with a panel of experts to find out what is happening in world of memories. Taking part in the discussion are [getperson id="11073" comment="Charlie Cheng"], chief executive officer at [getentity id="22135" e_name="Kilopass Technology"]; Navraj Nandra, senior director of marketing for Analog/Mixed signal IP, embedded memories and logic libraries at [getentity ... » read more

Balancing The Cost Of Test


As semiconductor devices became larger and more complex, the cost of [getkc id="174" kc_name="test"] increased. Testers were large pieces of capital equipment designed to execute functional vectors at-speed and the technology being used had to keep up with increasing demands placed on them. Because of this, the cost of test did not decrease in the way that other high-tech equipment did. Around ... » read more

Legal Battlefield In Emulation


Given the rate of research and development within the EDA industry, you might expect it to be a highly litigious industry, but apart from theft claims, there have not been that many law suits brought to bear – except in the area of [getkc id="30" comment="emulation"]. Emulation has, since its early days in the early 1990s, always been a legal battlefield, and the hostilities continue to this ... » read more

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