How To Reduce The Need For Guardbanding A Flash ADC Design


For sensitive mixed-signal designs at small process nodes, the influence of parasitic elements is growing with the increasing interactions among devices and interconnects that are in close proximity. Circuits are highly sensitive to these parasitic effects, and accurate parasitic extraction is critical for first silicon success. New 3D parasitic extraction technology applied to a flash ADC circ... » read more

Solutions For Mixed-Signal SoC Verification


Performing full-chip verification of large mixed-signal systems on chip (SoCs) is an increasingly daunting task. As complexity grows and process nodes shrink, it’s no longer adequate to bolt together analog or digital “black boxes” that are presumed to be pre-verified. Complex analog/ digital interactions can create functional errors, which delay tapeouts and lead to costly silicon re-spi... » read more

Solutions For Mixed-Signal IP, IC, And SoC Implementation


Traditional mixed-signal design environments, in which analog and digital parts are implemented separately, are no longer sufficient and lead to excess iteration and prolonged design cycle time. Realizing modern mixed-signal designs requires new flows that maximize productivity and facilitate close collaboration among analog and digital designers. This paper outlines mixed-signal implem... » read more

Physical Verification Of FinFETs And Fully Depleted SOI


It has become very difficult to effectively shrink traditional bulk planar transistors below 20nm due to physical effects that become dominant in very short conduction channels. The major impediment is an unacceptable rise in power consumption due to significant leakage currents. New transistor architectures are being adopted that offer a solution for these short-channel effects and allow trans... » read more

Trying To Catch Up With Software Developers


By Frank Schirrmeister The electronic design automation (EDA) industry has now been trying for at least a decade and a half to catch up with software developers, for two main reasons. First, there are so many of them that it would be great to expand EDA into that domain. Second, semiconductor companies, i.e. the core customers to which the EDA industry sells, have had to add more and more soft... » read more

Verifying Your Intent


Design rule checking (DRC), layout versus schematic (LVS) and electrical rule checking (ERC) are physical verification techniques that are mandatory today to check a design and its structures before manufacturing. Checking electrical characteristics of a design is one thing. Verifying power intent is quite another. And the overlap of the two is an intriguing concept. Case in point: Checking fo... » read more

Experts At The Table: Verification Strategies


By Ed Sperling System-Level Design sat down to discuss verification strategies and changes with Harry Foster, chief verification scientist at Mentor Graphics: Janick Bergeron, verification fellow at Synopsys; Pranav Ashar, CTO at Real Intent; Tom Anderson, vice president of marketing at Breker Verification Systems; and Raik Brinkmann, president and CEO of OneSpin Solutions. What follows are ex... » read more

Smarter Things


By Ed Sperling SoC design has largely been a race to the next process node in accordance with Moore’s Law, but it’s about to take a sharp turn away from that as the Internet of Things becomes more ubiquitous. There has been much made about the Internet of Things over the past couple of years—home networks that involve smart refrigerators sending reminders to consumers that the milk is... » read more

Mythbusting: Co-Design


By Ann Steffora Mutschler It turns out that while there needs to be understanding between hardware and software engineers, the people doing the programming don’t actually want or need to interact. There is not, nor probably ever will be, one single team with hardware and software engineers happily working together on a project. But it’s not a total disconnect. There are a number o... » read more

The New Platform-Based Design


By Ann Steffora Mutschler Driven by the continued explosion in design costs, the term ‘platform-based design’ is evolving. A platform used to be viewed as an actual chip with some configurability on it that a semiconductor company promoted. Their customers would buy that chip in volume, configure it to their requirements, and sell it inside their end devices. The definition has beco... » read more

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