From Game Theory To The Unified Theory of Coherency


Adam Smith said that the best result comes from everyone in the group doing what is best for himself. But he’s only half right because the best result would come from everyone in the group doing what is best for himself and the group. If you are wondering where you might have heard this before, it was Russell Crowe playing John Nash in the movie “A Beautiful Mind.” John Nash was an Ame... » read more

Digging Into Trace Data


In previous blogs we covered an introduction to System Trace Macrocell (STM) concepts and terminology, and the STM Programmers' model with an example of how to generate efficient trace data. Once the STM is generating a trace stream, we may wish to view it within our Debugger. DS-5 implements an "Events View," which serves this purpose. Configuring your target First, it is necessary to... » read more

Improve DFT Verification And Meet Time-To-Market Goals With Emulation


What if all the DFT verification on your next big chip could be completed before tape-out? This “shift-left” of DFT verification would eliminate the need for shortcuts in verification and allow for more types of verification. The benefits of faster and earlier DFT verification include higher confidence in the “golden” RTL, eliminating DFT from the critical path of tape-out, and more pre... » read more

DAC Day Four: Excitement And Risk


One thing that was new to DAC this year, was an art exhibit. These were pieces of artwork related to our industry, such as chip plots, or more abstract ideas based on design data or analyses. They received many more entrants than their wildest dreams and had to choose a winner from over 80 pieces, but the grand prize was won by a 3D model of a finFET by David Freid of Coventor. This piece was ... » read more

DAC Day Three: UVM, Machine Learning And DFT Come Together


The industry and users have a love/hate relationship with UVM. It has quickly risen to become the most used verification methodology and yet at the same time it is seen as being overly complex, unwieldy and difficult to learn. The third day of DAC gets started with breakfast with Accellera to discuss UVM and what we can expect to see in the next 5 years. The discussion was led by Tom Alsop, pri... » read more

DAC Day Two: Down To Business


DAC day two started with a breakfast presentation put on by Synopsys which included guests from ARM, TSMC and HiSilicon. It was titled Collaborating to Enable Design with the latest processors and finFET processes. Collaboration is a word that we hear increasingly when talking about the advanced nodes and today we are truly at the point where one company cannot do it all. Ron Moore, VP of ma... » read more

DAC Day One: EDA Through Different Glasses


DAC is back in Austin after being away for three years. The weather improved for our arrival after the bad thunderstorms of the past couple of weeks. The sun came out and started to heat everything up. With water still pooling around the place, it was somewhat humorous to see a bus pass with the slogan "Think about Austin without water." DAC starts, as it always has in my memory, with a pres... » read more

Cooperation Instead Of Competition


I spent more than 20 years working in EDA and managed to do so without ever working for one of the big three. Big EDA companies were always the competition. Oh sure, you’d partner with them strategically if you could, but always keeping in mind that little fish swimming with big fish often end up being eaten. That all changed seven months ago when ARM acquired Carbon’s technology and tea... » read more

Preparations for DAC


The 53rd DAC is just days away now and the program is pretty well established at this point. It is returning to Austin after a couple of years in San Francisco. In 2013 it was held in this location for the first time and there was a herculean effort to bring the local design community to the event. They did amazing well and while attendance fell slightly compared to the previous year in San Die... » read more

Prototyping Server Farms


Coming from the virtual prototyping world, I envisioned FPGA-based prototyping as mostly a one on one application, meaning that the system resides with the end user or at least in a room close to the end user. However, it turns out that a lot of companies have moved towards a physical prototyping server farm setup. Let’s look at what it means to have a prototyping server farm, the associat... » read more

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