Blog Review: Nov. 27


Synopsys’ Brent Gregory is looking at real-world experiments to figure out which EDA software is better. Make sure to check out his stats. Cadence’s Brian Fuller interviews two Samsung engineers in a video about the image technology in smart phone cameras and just how far it’s progressed. Hint: Don’t forget to charge your phone on your next vacation. Mentor’s Colin Walls points ... » read more

IEEE 1801 UPF Tutorial


This tutorial from DVCon 2013 covers the basics of Accellera UPF and then focuses on the features of IEEE 1801 that enable the description of more sophisticated power management systems. The tutorial also provides recommendations regarding migration from Accellera UPF to IEEE 1801 and the methodology changes that are required. And, it presents a UPF-based design flow highlighting the practical ... » read more

Community, Collaboration And Standards


EDA tools/methodologies and semiconductor IP creation are strongly driven by standards. Dating back to the 1980s, standards have helped shape electronic design industry – from the way we design silicon to the way we do business. Indeed, [getentity id="22024" comment="Accellera"] was formed from a merger of two leading standards bodies in the early 1990s, [getentity id="22025" comment="VHDL In... » read more

The Problem With EDA Standards


In the EDA industry, does standard mean the same as it does in most industries? The Free Dictionary defines it as: Something, such as a practice or a product, that is widely recognized or employed, especially because of its excellence. In the EDA industry, a standards body is the place where EDA companies and customers come together to try and bring about convergence, often in a new or emerging... » read more

Standards Watch


This may sound odd to anyone outside of the SoC world, but as more functionality and more components move from PCB to chip—or at least the same package—what’s happening in the standards world is mirroring what’s going on in semiconductor design and manufacturing. The rule of thumb in the standards world is that as new techniques and technologies are introduced, the number of standard... » read more

IP-XACT Becoming More Useful


Accellera created analog/mixed signal extensions to the IEEE IP-XACT standard, and the standards group will recommend an update to the overall standard later this year to make it more useful for IP integration. IP-XACT has been considered a great idea since its introduction in 2009 because it allows IP makers to add metadata to their IP—information needed to integrate it into complex desig... » read more

Raising The IP Abstraction Level


By Ed Sperling An increasing reliance on commercial and re-used IP and more emphasis placed on software development is adding even more pressure onto semiconductor design teams to figure out the benefits and limitations of myriad possible choices earlier in the design process. Design teams already are under pressure to meet increasingly tighter market deadlines, and it is stressing every pa... » read more

A Tale Of Two Standards


By Ed Sperling It could well be one of the strangest developments in standards history. Two competing standards for power formats were rolled out in the middle of the last decade and aside from a few cries of foul they fell below the radar screen of most chip designers and architects for a half-dozen years. Fast forward to the present and the Common Power Format (CPF) and Unified Power Form... » read more

The Growing Integration Challenge


By Ed Sperling As the number of processors and the amount of memory and IP on a chip continues to skyrocket, so does the challenge for integrating all of this stuff on a single die—or even multiple dies in the same package. There are a number of reasons why it’s getting more difficult to make all of these IP blocks work together. First of all, nothing ever stands still in design. As a r... » read more

More Intelligent Standards


There is a lot of talk these days about holistic power intent. The terminology may sound new, but the underpinnings are not. This was the idea behind the Common Power Format, which was proposed by Cadence back in 2006, and the Unified Power Format (more recently known as IEEE 1801), which was introduced the following year. These ideas were forward-looking at the time. They grasped the growi... » read more

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