A Bird’s Eye View


We are living in the age of pictures. Just about any event or non-event in our life is being captured in a picture. Even more so, a lot of those pictures are being shared with others. It offers us a way to share a moment with the ones who weren’t there. Living with my wife and children in Silicon Valley, far away from our family in Belgium, it provides us with a way to show what we are up to ... » read more

Speeding Up Timing Constraint Creation, Refinement And Validation


We are dealing with designs integrating many features and working with cutting-edge process technologies. Design methodologies and the design and process complexities can be overwhelming. To leverage the advancements in EDA tools and to achieve optimal power, performance and area results while overcoming design complexities, it is important to have a qualitative timing constraint file that c... » read more

Simulation Performance Driven By Model Efficiency


In real estate it’s all about location, location, location. For system level simulation it’s all about performance, performance, performance. I have heard many opinions on the performance of SystemC and TLM simulations: some positive, some negative, much of the opinion based on hearsay or other unreliable information. I believe the performance of the simulation is mainly driven by the model... » read more

The Danger of Using Patents


As I have written about recently, [getkc id="30" kc_name="emulation"] is a hot topic for EDA and the number and length of lawsuits related to the technology is almost overwhelming. The latest phase has just concluded with a summary judgment against [getentity id="22035" e_name="Synopsys"] on Jan. 20. It all started in late 2012 when Synopsys, which had just acquired [getentity id="22738" e_nam... » read more

Important Changes Ahead


Two of Si2's important industry standards efforts will be featured later this month at DesignCon, a popular Silicon Valley event that is now in its 20th year. In the panel entitled, "System-Level Power Modeling—What's the Big Deal?", leading industry experts from AMD, Avago Technologies, Cadence, Docea Power, Qualcomm, and Si2 will focus on the growing need to take a higher level and more... » read more

Market Outlook For 2015


It's always easier to look back at what happened in the past 12 months than to try to piece together a coherent picture for what could happen over the next year. A good prediction relies on lots of data points, and even then it can be wrong. In a global industry, where geopolitical strife or pandemics can send markets tumbling or open up new ones, it's not possible to account for all the unk... » read more

And the Winner is…


Semiconductor Engineering now has its first full year under its belt, and I have to say it has been an incredible year. Not only did we exceed a million page views in our first year, but we also got started on the Knowledge Center, an endeavor the likes of which has never been attempted in our industry. It is still very young and has a lot of growing up to do, but it is a wonderful start. We wo... » read more

Top-Down SoC Verification


In the world of system-on-chip (SoC) verification, 2014 was an interesting year of transition. After much discussion throughout the year about graph-based techniques and the role of software for verification, we at Cadence ended the year with a bang – last week we announced Perspec System Verifier. The customers with whom we’ve been working on this product for years tell us that this is a b... » read more

The ABCs Of ISO 26262


Over the last one-and-a-half years that I have been elbow-deep working on the FlexNoC Resilience Package, I’ve been keeping a running list of ISO 26262 abbreviations and acronyms that reoccurred in my work, and kept confusing me whenever I performed a “context switch” from working on different projects to working on my functional safety products. I’ve received feedback that my list is h... » read more

Turning On The Virtual Prototyping Hose


Growing up in Belgium, it never occurred to me that rain—or for that matter water—can be in short supply. Having lived in California for more than eight years, now I know better. While I still enjoy the fantastic weather in the Bay Area, I do realize the importance of having enough rain and water. Water is one of those resources that we easily take for granted. It is, in fact, the most impo... » read more

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