Towards A Metric To Measure Verification Computing Efficiency


Thinking back about DAC 2015 in San Francisco earlier this month, I am happy that at least some of my predictions came true—there was clearly a trend towards making verification smarter. However, one thing struck me while hearing all the discussions on connecting engines is what Jim Hogan called the continuum of verification engines (COVE)—and what we at Cadence call the system development ... » read more

DoD Scratches Its Head Over Foundry Security


When the GlobalFoundries deal with IBM to acquire its foundries closes, as it is slated to sometime during 2015, the U.S. Department of Defense has a small problem on its hands. Military programs no longer will have access to a trusted fab to manufacture semiconductors. How do you ensure that the foundry did not modify or alter your design, add backdoor access or implement a remote control mech... » read more

Shift Left: Software Or Hardware?


A couple of weeks ago I was with a virtual prototyping user who described the benefits his company has seen from deploying virtual prototyping for early software development. The use of virtual prototyping has been rolled out progressively to more projects over the years, making it possible for the company to measure its impact on the software availability schedule and the impact has been drama... » read more

Big Data, Big Opportunities


For the last two decades I have spent a lot of my time managing operations and sales for several EDA startups, most of which were acquired. The focus of many of these companies was to provide solutions to optimize complex designs. We worked to enhance many of the top 25 semiconductor companies’ physical implementation flows using cutting edge technologies and methodologies to improve power, p... » read more

Asynchronous’ Impact On Tools


In the right situation, using asynchronous logic makes a lot of sense—especially for security and IoT. But moving into the asynchronous design involves making tradeoffs, figuring out how the technical requirements of an application will impact the design, and understanding the limits of EDA tools in this area. “It's going to be halfway between digital and analog support,” said Bernard ... » read more

Thermal Interface Materials: The Unknown Entity?


Thermal interface materials (TIMs) are becoming more important in all application areas and between different component parts. Any semiconductor, ranging from LEDs to high-power electronics, is becoming smaller, yet producing more power. In many ways the physical design limits have been reached for packaging, allowing entire components to have a total thermal resistance of less than 0.1 K/W. Ho... » read more

Is Your Automotive Software Robust Enough for Hardware Faults?


A look at how virtual prototyping is expanding its reach to improve development of safety critical systems and deal with the single most complex aspect of automotive systems: the embedded software. To read more, click here. » read more

Dedicated ASIC Design Is Now Cost-Effective


Current market and technology trends have increased the demand for mixed-signal ASICs. Smaller projects with modest design budgets are viable due to low cost design tools and easy access to flexible, mature IC processes. This is especially compelling for developing mixed-signal ASICs for cost-sensitive sensor applications for the Internet of things (IoT). This paper discusses how costs and risk... » read more

Interoperable Application-Specific Solutions For Formal Verification


Historically, formal verification technology has been licensed as a compre- hensive suite of tools that can be used to address a broad range of formal verification applications and problems. Such deployment required a wide range of in-depth skills on the user’s part before the technology could be leveraged by not only first time users, but also experienced ones. New users were often overwhelm... » read more

Blog Review: June 24


Rambus' Aharon Etengoff reports on a new development enabling a needle measuring just a few millimeters in length to inject mesh electronics directly into the brain, and the medical possibilities of injectable electronics. ARM's Eoin McCann presents seven topics getting a lot of air time both in the booths and in speeches, presentations and panel discussions at DAC. Synopsys' Michael Posn... » read more

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