The Week In Review: Design/IoT


Tools Mentor Graphics uncorked its new IC, package, and PCB co-design and optimization product. It includes a formal flow for ball grid array ball-map planning and optimization based on an "intelligent pin" concept and a multi-mode connectivity management system for cross-domain pin-mapping and system level cross-domain logical verification. Synopsys released a new tool for designing ASIP... » read more

Playing With Bubbles


The first is in the social media world, where there simply are too many sites for a fixed population of users. Much has been written about this trend, including in this blog, and the big question is whether there is enough new business in new markets such as the IoT to soften the landing. The IoT has a long way to go, and a long way to grow. That growth will propel everything from the desig... » read more

Designs Getting Squeezed


It's taking longer to get chips manufactured these days. At advanced nodes, there are more steps on the photomask side as a result of double and multi-patterning. And at established nodes, an explosion in demand for chips aimed at automotive and [getkc id="76" comment="Internet of Things"]—particularly on the industrial IoT side ([getkc id="78" kc_name="IIoT"])—has created demand-driven con... » read more

What Is Functional Accuracy?


What it means to be functionally accurate in the context of [getkc id="104" kc_name="virtual platforms"] varies greatly, depending upon whom you ask and even when you ask them. But that doesn’t mean that functional accuracy isn’t useful. Jon McDonald, technical marketing engineer for the design and creation business at [getentity id="22017" e_name="Mentor Graphics"], expects to see a lot... » read more

Is SystemC Broken?


In order to perform architectural exploration, performance analysis and optimization, early validation of software, improved productivity in hardware development and many other tasks, the industry needs a viable [getkc id="104" kc_name="virtual prototype"]. That requires a suitable language in order to express necessary concepts at a high enough level of [getkc id="101" kc_name="abstraction"] s... » read more

Design By Architect Or Committee?


Everything we do is based on a language. It doesn’t matter if we are talking about design, verification, specification, software or mask data. They all provide a way to communicate intent, and then there are engines that work on the intent to produce something else that is desirable, also based on a language. Over time, the EDA industry has built up a hierarchy of languages from the most deta... » read more

NoC Reliability: Simplified


Recently, the reliability features of on-chip network (NoC) IP have received much attention. One reason for this focus has been the rush of companies to get into the automotive electronics market and the explosion of new automotive features being implemented in electronic systems. While the details may vary, the high-level view of on-chip network reliability is really quite simple. At the ar... » read more

Fast Followers And The Value of Virtual Prototyping


I am writing this blog while traveling though China. In this country of opportunities, new electronics companies show up regularly and some of them are quickly growing to become leaders in their application domain. Of course it helps if your local market is as big, if not bigger, than the U.S. and European market combined. The advantage of being a fast follower is that you can learn from th... » read more

Ecosystem Changes


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss changes in the semiconductor ecosystem with Kelvin Low, senior director of foundry marketing at [getentity id="22865" e_name="Samsung Semiconductor"]; John Costello, vice president of product planning at [getentity id="22849" e_name="Altera"]; Randy Smith, vice president of marketing at [getentity id="22605" e_name="Sonics"], and Michiel Ligthart, p... » read more

Patents And EDA Making Waves


If the old adage “may you live in interesting times” is true, then lawyers must be wondering if they should be very happy or scared. The rate at which [getkc id="16" comment="patent"] law, and patents in general, are changing should give everyone pause – including the future competitiveness of the United States and the value of patents to EDA. The World Intellectual Property Organizati... » read more

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