Good Times For Analog Designers


By Ann Steffora Mutschler For a number of technological reasons, analog/mixed-signal design and low-power design are converging, and with that comes both challenges and opportunities. As far as challenges go, process variations at 14nm, 20nm and even 28nm have increased significantly to include DFM impacts such as layout-delay effects. On the digital side, those process changes affect... » read more

New Issues In Signoff


By Ed Sperling Signoff has always been a challenge at every stage of an SoC design flow. No matter how good a design looks, or how well a prototype works, there are still problems that can crop up at any stage of the design flow all the way into manufacturing that can leave engineering teams shaking their heads. Even at mainstream process nodes, respins are common. At advanced nodes—part... » read more

RTL Design-For-Power Methodology


This white paper presents a design-for-power methodology, beginning early in the design process at the RTL-level for maximum impact on power. To download this white paper, click here. » read more

ST-Ericsson 28nm FD-SOI/ARM Chip Hits 2.8GHz at CES


Posted by Adele Hars, Editor-in-Chief, Advanced Substrate News ~  ~ What a great start to 2013: at CES in Las Vegas, ST-Ericsson announced the NovaThor™ L8580 ModAp, “the world’s fastest and lowest-power integrated LTE smartphone platform.” This is the one that’s on STMicroelectronics’ 28nm FD-SOI, with sampling set for Q1 2013. And it’s a game changer – for users, fo... » read more

Don’t miss Fully-Depleted Tech Symposium during IEDM (SF)


Posted by Adele Hars, Editor-in-Chief, Advanced Substrate News ~  ~ If you want to cut through the noise surrounding the choices for 28nm and beyond, an excellent place to start is the SOI Consortium’s Fully Depleted Technology Symposium. As a member of the design and manufacturing communities, this is your chance to see and hear what industry leaders are actually doing. Planar? F... » read more

Experts At The Table: SoC Verification


By Ed Sperling System-Level Design sat down to discuss the challenges of verification with Frank Schirrmeister, group director for product marketing of the System Development Suite at Cadence; Charles Janac, chairman and CEO of Arteris, Venkat Iyer, CTO of Uniquify; and Adnan Hamid, CEO of Breker Verification Systems. What follows are excerpts of that discussion. SLD: As we get more third-... » read more

The IP Kit


This white paper focuses on how SoC designers and integrators can effectively assess the quality and completeness of soft IP cores. A methodology for accomplishing this goal is presented, and an overview is provided of the Atrenta IP Kit - an application of the SpyGlass platform that implements a soft IP quality qualification methodology. To download this white paper, click here. » read more

ST’s FD-SOI Tech Available to All Through GF


Posted by Adele Hars, Editor-in-Chief, Advanced Substrate News ~  ~ In the spring of 2012, STMicroelectronics announced the company would be manufacturing ST-Ericsson’s next-generation (and very successful) NovaThor ARM-based smartphone/tablet processors using 28nm FD-SOI process technology. With first samples coming out this fall, ASN talks to Jean-Marc Chery, Executive Vice Pres... » read more

Being Different Is Bad


By Ann Steffora Mutschler Today’s SoCs contain as much as 80% existing IP that either has been re-used from previous projects or obtained from a third party. Models are created of this hardware IP, as well as new portions of the design, in order to create a virtual prototype that allows the engineering team to see the complete system by running software and applications. While this a... » read more

The Seven Layers Of Hardware-Software Debug


By Frank Schirrmeister [caption id="attachment_9863" align="alignnone" width="639"] Seven Layers of Hardware/Software Debug[/caption] Of course I will be in trouble once this blog is posted. This post is about hardware/software debug,  and I tried to layer a set of different levels for the scope and applicability of debug. I counted seven layers, but I am sure that one may be able to arr... » read more

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