The Week In Review: Design


Tools Synopsys updated RSoft, its software for the design of photonic devices. The updates include increased integration with the company's TCAD products as well as faster simulations and additional ways to customize photonic device analysis. IP Mentor Graphics, Northwest Logic, and Krivi Semiconductor collaborated on DDR4 SDRAM IP to integrate design and verification into a single flo... » read more

Choosing Verification Engines


Emulation, simulation, FPGA prototyping and formal verification have very specific uses on paper, but the lines are becoming less clear as complexity goes up, more third-party IP is included, and the number of use cases and interactions of connected devices explodes. Ironically, the lines are blurring not for the most complex SoCs, such as those used in smart phones. The bigger challenge app... » read more

Blog Review: Oct. 5


Mentor's Michael White explores why established nodes are experiencing such an unexpectedly long lifespan and how that is driving new challenges for designers. Cadence's Ann Keffer checks out the history of Ethernet and how it won the battle to become the dominant network protocol. Is your IoT device fueling a botnet? Vulnerable firmware on internet connected devices was behind one of the... » read more

System Bits: Oct. 4


Light deflection through fog In a development that could lead to computer vision systems that work in fog or drizzle, which have been a major obstacle to self-driving cars, MIT researchers have developed a technique for recovering visual information from light that has scattered because of interactions with the environment — such as passing through human tissue. This technology — called... » read more

The Real Differences Between HW And SW


How many times have we heard people say that hardware and software do not speak the same language? The two often have different terms for essentially the same thing. What hardware calls constrained random test is what software people call fuzzing. Another one recently caught my eye in a conversation with Jama Software, a Portland software company that has made a name for itself in requiremen... » read more

Alexa, Can You Help Me Build A Better SoC?


Consumers have fallen love with clever products like Amazon Echo, Nest, Google maps, Waze and Zillow that somehow make life a little easier and more fun. The underlying technology that makes these apps so rich and useful is machine learning and it seems to be showing up everywhere. Maybe it’s time to ask, “Alexa, can you help me build a better SoC?” The Next Frontier in SoC Architectur... » read more

Heterogeneous System Challenges Grow


As more types of processors are added into SoCs—CPUs, GPUs, DSPs and accelerators, each running a different OS—there is a growing challenge to make sure these compute elements interact properly with their neighbors. Adding to the problem is this mix of processors and accelerators varies widely between different markets and applications. In mobile there are CPUs, GPUs, video and crypto pr... » read more

The Trust Burning Debug Cycle From Hell


As bad as The Trust Burning Debug Cycle From Hell sounds, it’s worse than you think. Most of us don’t realize it exists. In my first 10 years as a hardware developer I wrote code like it could never exist! But then came the realization. It’s a cycle that preys on us all. It tempts me constantly. Most of us in hardware development are used to seeing bugs as annoyances at a minimum, thou... » read more

The Week In Review: Design


Numbers EDA and IP sales increased 5.6% in Q2 to $2.013 billion, up from $1.907 billion in the same period in 2015, according to the most recent Electronic System Design Alliance numbers. Asia/Pacific revenue increased 10.9% to $608.1 million; Japan increased 15.7% to $211.4 million. The Americas increased 4.4% to $908.4 million. IP Cadence launched the latest generation of its Xtensa ... » read more

Fear Of Machines


In the tech industry, the main concern over the past five decades has been about what machines could not do. Now the big worry is what they can do. From the outset of the computer age, the biggest challenges were uptime, ease of use, reliability, and as devices became more connected, the quality and reliability of that connection. As the next phase of machines begins, those problems have bee... » read more

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