Use Tcl To Save Signals More Efficiently In AMS Simulations


Saving signal waveforms during a simulation is one of the basic ways to check the simulation results. However, with large SoC designs, it’s not always practical to save all signals during simulation, and the simulation performance might also be impacted by the number of signals being saved. Therefore, a crucial part of the simulation setup is to specify the expected and essential signals to s... » read more

The Power Of Computational Software: From Revolutionizing Chips To Cancer Research


This post is an excerpt from the keynote presentation at CadenceLIVE India, given by Nimish Modi, senior vice president and general manager of Strategy and New Ventures at Cadence. The semiconductor industry has grown significantly lately but follows a cyclical pattern marked by fluctuations. Currently, we are witnessing a macro-level correction aimed at resolving inventory imbalances. N... » read more

224G SerDes Trend and Solution


As an industry early mover to support the emerging 800G/1.6T networks, Cadence taped out the 224G-LR SerDes PHY IP on TSMC’s 3nm process at the beginning of the year and expects the silicon to arrive soon. The IP supports 1-225Gbps data rates with excellent BER at long reach (LR). The ever-increasing bandwidth requirement in hyperscale data centers is driving the rapid growth of high-speed I/... » read more

Revolutionizing Product Development And User Experience: The Transformative Power Of Generative AI


Generative AI has become a prominent and versatile solution across various domains, including chip and system development. Its progress and impact have outpaced many other technological advancements, significantly benefiting numerous areas. In the semiconductor industry, EDA tools with generative AI have already established their position by offering unparalleled optimization capabilities. Thes... » read more

The History Of CMOS


Since CMOS has been around for about 50 years, a comprehensive history would be a book. This blog focuses on what I consider the major transitions. NMOS Before CMOS, there was NMOS (also PMOS, but I have no direct experience with that). An NMOS gate consisted of a network of N-transistors between the output and Vss, and a resistor (actually a transistor with an implant) between the output and... » read more

Notes From CadenceLIVE Silicon Valley 2023


Last week was CadenceLIVE Silicon Valley, held at the Santa Clara Convention Center, and took place, as usual, over two days. It was very well attended and everywhere seemed fairly crowded. The structure of CadenceLIVE was that the first morning was taken up with four keynotes. Then the rest of the day and all of the following day were taken up with about ten parallel technical tracks. And at l... » read more

Like Wayne Gretzky, EDA Aims To Be Where The Puck Is Going, Not Where It Has Been


When I launched this blog series, I set out to share some of the more unique industry transitions I’ve witnessed over my 20+ year career in EDA. The B2B sales process has not been immune to change and transition. In fact, you could create a college curriculum with a daunting syllabus on the major transitions that have impacted the B2B sales process. I won’t drop that on you. The room wh... » read more

How To Make Chiplets A Viable Market


At the recent Chiplet Summit, there was a panel session on the last afternoon titled "How to Make Chiplets a Viable Market." The panel was moderated by Meta's Ravi Agarwal, and the panelists were (from left to right in the photo): Travis Lanier of Ventana Micro Systems...actually Travis couldn't make it and Ventana was represented by Charles, but I didn't catch his last name Clint Walk... » read more

IEDM: TSMC N3 Details


I attended IEDM in San Francisco in December. There were two presentations about TSMC's N3 process. This is actually a bit of a misnomer since TSMC has two N3 processes, one simply called N3. The other (the second generation) is called N3E. The two papers were: Critical Process Features Enabling Aggressive Contacted Gate Pitch Scaling for 3nm CMOS Technology and Beyond A 3nm CMOS FinFl... » read more

IEDM Keynote: Ann Kelleher On Future Technology


IEDM 2022 celebrated 75 Years of the Transistor. I can't imagine anything else invented in the last 75 years has had as much effect on my life, and probably yours, too. After the awards session, the conference got underway with a keynote by Ann Kelleher, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Technology Development at Intel. It was titled "Celebrating 75 Years of the Transistor! A L... » read more

← Older posts Newer posts →