Week In Review: Design, Low Power


Tools Synopsys debuted the VC SpyGlass RTL Static Signoff platform featuring new noise reduction technology that uses machine learning to reduce noise by 10X without loss of quality of results. It also provides comprehensive CDC and RDC analysis to catch logic issues added during implementation, and is integrated with Synopsys' automated debug system. Ansys released RaptorH, a tool that com... » read more

Speeding Up FPGA Development


Salaheddin Hetalani, field application engineer at OneSpin Solutions, talks about why it’s getting harder to design and debug FPGAs, how much design time can be saved through formal techniques, and why just relying on programmability isn’t the most efficient approach. » read more

Chip Design Is Getting Squishy


So many variables, uncertainties and new approaches are in play today across the chip industry today that previous rules are looking rather dated. In the past, a handful of large companies or organizations set the rules for the industry and established an industry roadmap. No such roadmap exists today. And while there are efforts underway to create new roadmaps for different industries, inte... » read more

A New Breed Of Engineer


The industry loves to move in straight lines. Each generation of silicon is more-or-less a linear extrapolation of what came before. There are many reasons for this – products continue to evolve within the industry, adding new or higher performance interfaces, risk levels are lower when the minimum amount is changed for any chip spin, existing software is more likely to run with only minor mo... » read more

Is There Finally A Silver Bullet For Software?


As I am in Nuremberg for the annual embedded world conference, the overall mood here seemed a bit muted and slow on day one. There are rumors of 200 exhibitors of the roughly 1100 having pulled out due to the global health situation—we are all asked not to shake hands and smile instead—and the rainy weather doesn't help much either. With the weather turning to snow on day two, the attendanc... » read more

Timing Library LVF Validation For Production Design Flows


Variation modeling has evolved over the past several years from a single derating factor that represents on-chip variation (OCV), to Liberty Variation Format (LVF), today’s leading standard format that encapsulates variation information in timing libraries (.libs). LVF data is considered a requirement for advanced process nodes 22nm and below. At the smallest process nodes such as 7nm and ... » read more

Keep The Wooden Horse Out Of Your Chip


The OneSpin's Holiday Puzzle tradition has reached its fourth year: hear, hear! In December 2016, OneSpin challenged engineers to solve the Einstein riddle using assertions and a formal verification tool. In December 2017, the challenge was to model the hardest Sudoku in the world using assertions and find a solution with a formal tool. The OneSpin 2018-19 Holiday Puzzle asked engineers to desi... » read more

Simulation: Go Parallel Or Go Home


Although complemented by other valuable technologies, functional simulation remains at the heart of semiconductor verification. Every chip project still develops a testbench, usually compliant with the Universal Verification Methodology (UVM), and a large test suite. Constrained-random stimulus generation has largely replaced hand-crafted tests, but at the expense of much more simulation time. ... » read more

An Increasingly Complicated Relationship With Memory


The relationship between a processor and its memory used to be quite simple, but in modern SoCs there are multiple heterogeneous processors and accelerators, each needing a different means of accessing memory for maximum efficiency. Compromises are being made in order to preserve the unified programming model of the past, but the pressures are increasing for some fundamental changes. It does... » read more

The Challenges Of Building Inferencing Chips


Putting a trained algorithm to work in the field is creating a frenzy of activity across the chip world, spurring designs that range from purpose-built specialty processors and accelerators to more generalized extensions of existing and silicon-proven technologies. What's clear so far is that no single chip architecture has been deemed the go-to solution for inferencing. Machine learning is ... » read more

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