Author's Latest Posts


Functional Safety Implementation Goes Mainstream


Electronics engineers are being thrust into the automotive market like never before. The move to electrify automobiles, along with the advent of self-driving cars, means that silicon designers will be designing ever more sophisticated automotive ICs. But cars aren’t like most other electronic systems; it’s imperative that they cause no harm should they fail. This brings us to the realm o... » read more

For SoC ISO 26262 Compliance, Should All EDA Tools Be TCL1?


ISO 26262, the automotive functional safety standard, requires the assessment of software tool confidence levels (TCLs) as either a TCL1, TCL2 or TCL3.  Part 8:2011, clause 11.4.5 of the ISO 26262 standard provides a methodology with guidance for software tool classification and qualification. It applies to software tools used for the development of safety-critical designs where it is essentia... » read more

Low Power Trends Toward FinFET


My previous blog, Power Reduction Techniques, covered which low power techniques were applicable for various process nodes, from larger planar CMOS process technologies through finFET. The 16 and 14nm finFET-based process nodes are moving into production this year, and we are seeing many companies rapidly move their designs to finFET. In my last post, I noted some of the reasons why finFET is s... » read more

Power Reduction Techniques


As 16nm and 14nm finFET process nodes come into production toward the end of this year, the performance (up to 30% vs. 28nm planar CMOS), power (~30%) and area (up to ~50%) benefits have been well documented. The same can be said for the 28nm FD-SOI process as it gains more traction in the marketplace touting similar performance and power improvements as those for FinFET when compared against i... » read more