Legal Battlefield In Emulation


Given the rate of research and development within the EDA industry, you might expect it to be a highly litigious industry, but apart from theft claims, there have not been that many law suits brought to bear – except in the area of [getkc id="30" comment="emulation"]. Emulation has, since its early days in the early 1990s, always been a legal battlefield, and the hostilities continue to this ... » read more

Are Models Holding Back New Methodologies


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss the state of the industry for [getkc id="101" kc_name="modeling"] at abstractions above [getkc id="49" kc_name="RTL"], a factor which has delayed adoption of [getkc id="104" kn_name="virtual prototypes"] and the proliferation of system-level design and hardware/software codesign. Taking part in the discussion were Frank Schirmeister, group director,... » read more

System Design Enabling Surround Computing


For a while now I have been wondering about the next killer application driving electronics. During CDNLive in Austin a couple of weeks ago, Dr. Lisa Su, at the time still Chief Operating Officer and since October 7th president and CEO at AMD, gave some answers at a keynote titled, “The Trends Redefining Our Industry.” The answer may well be “surround computing.” Su identified a coup... » read more

When To Use Simulation, When To Use Emulation


Should you emulate or simulate? In this brief historical review, Dr. Lauro Rizzatti compares the two and reveals when to use which and explains why only emulation can verify embedded SW in an SoC design. To read more, click here. » read more

Extending Digital Verification Techniques For Mixed-Signal SoCs With VCS AMS


The growth in mixed-signal system-on-chip (SoC) designs is driven by many factors, including cost, performance and power consumption. This is fueled by many industry segments, including mobile communication, automotive, imaging, medical, networking and power management. The convergence of analog and digital blocks within the same die is driving the need for SoC design teams to adopt new verific... » read more

Top 10 Ways To Automate Verification


It’s a persistent theme: engineers are expected to do more with the same or fewer resources. Meantime, designs continue to grow larger and more complex. Studies have shown that verification continues to consume up to 70% of the IC development cost in each advanced node. Cadence’s R&D teams designed the latest version of the Incisive® functional verification platform with these pressures in... » read more

Blog Review: Oct. 22


What is UX? The User Experience, of course. Rambus' Aharon Etengoff notes that the IoT UX is now the subject of a Harvard Business Review article. A long list of hurdles are expected at the 10nm process node, including multiple levels of local interconnects, more complex layout rules, timing problems, and a slew of others. Cadence's Richard Goering puts it all in perspective. Mentor's R... » read more

Tech Talk: SW vs. HW


Arteris CTO Craig Forest talks about what gets done in hardware, what gets done in software, and where the two worlds meet and sometimes collide. [youtube vid=-EbUTZL0uz8] » read more

System Bits: Oct. 21


Simplified superconducting circuits Computer chips with superconducting circuits, which means they have no electrical resistance, are said to be 50 to 100 times as energy-efficient as today’s technology. Superconducting chips are also said to have greater processing power: Superconducting circuits that use so-called Josephson junctions have been clocked at 770 gigahertz, or 500 times the spe... » read more

The Week In Review: Design


Legal Mentor Graphics won a $36 million award plus royalties stemming from a patent infringement case involving EVE (Emulation & Verification Engineering), an emulation company that was purchased by Synopsys in 2012. A U.S. District Court jury in the District of Oregon found that EVE had directly and indirectly infringed on a 2001 patent entitled "Method and apparatus for gate-level simula... » read more

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