Are Models Always The Answer?


Given the shift to system level design and the need to make tradeoffs early in the design process, much emphasis is placed on modeling, and for good reason. Tobias Bjerregaard, CEO of Teklatech reminded that power integrity analysis and signal integrity analysis evolved to be more or less a checkmark from many companies. “They run it and then say, ‘OK, it is fine,’ but they don't think... » read more

Keeping NFCs Secure


Short-range communications, including near-field and semi-near-field communications such as Bluetooth, AirDrop, and Zigbee, have become as much a part of our daily lives as our mobile devices. Through some incredible engineering and standards efforts, they have achieved low-power communication over short distances with remarkable accuracy and consistency. But as even more devices begin tapping ... » read more

Where We Go From Here


It is hard to argue against the evidence that the dynamics of modern software in embedded systems are making it nearly impractical for traditional approaches of cycle based simulation or emulation to survive as they’ve been while truly meeting the needs of hardware/software design teams. While it is not a topic the EDA companies are completely comfortable addressing directly, the fact is t... » read more

Why Build New Silicon?


You can’t turn around these days without hearing talk of our increasingly connected lives, tethered by the Internet of Everything (IoE), and cloud this, cloud that. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not knocking this next big thing because on many levels it is inspiring creativity, as all big things do. And the ramifications are still getting worked out as far as the impact on chip design, and t... » read more

The Power Of Software


There is no argument about the increasing importance of software in system designs today, given the intimate and integral role it plays in directing the very hardware it is co-designed with. There is also a very good case for certain kinds of software that lend themselves more to certain types of processors. This, of course, depends on what is meant by the type of processor, asserted Coli... » read more

Scalability From Granularity


You might have seen that ARM TechCon is happening this week in Silicon Valley, with a number of product announcements from the IP giant accompanying the conference. One of those is the A-35, which stuck out for me in terms of the range of scalability possible, among other things. Here is a graphic that shows the range of scalability: [caption id="attachment_23671" align="alignright" wid... » read more

Power Requires Holistic Perspective


With the move to smaller manufacturing nodes, power must be looked at from a holistic perspective. Instead of just optimizing a device or devising next generation power gating, power must be considered in the context of the whole system, Aveek Sarkar, vice president of product engineering and support at Ansys/Apache mentioned during a recent discussion about 5nm. In fact, he said, this c... » read more

Performance Analysis On Dark Silicon


It’s one thing to do performance analysis on the ‘light’ parts of an SoC design, but what about when most of the silicon is ‘dark?’ Jon McDonald, technical marketing engineer at Mentor Graphics stressed that modeling the effects of turning on and off sections of the silicon is an important part of creating an accurate representation of the system. “Our models support state-based... » read more

What To Do With Power Models


Ask any design engineer if they want a power model, and you can guess the answer. As far as what they want to use it for, the answer will vary. When I asked Jem Davies, ARM Fellow, if OEM engineering teams want a comprehensive power model, he said, “Ideally, yes. Perfectly ideally, what they would like to have from us is a model of each individual block of our IP which plugs together in a ... » read more

Remembering Gary Smith


The EDA industry recently said farewell to one of its biggest advocates, Gary Smith, who passed away on July 3. Writing a remembrance for an industry acquaintance can be uncomfortable; writing one for someone who was a friend is just, plain painful. While I had a number of years writing about technology under my belt, by the time I started covering EDA for Electronic Business in 1997 I k... » read more

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