5G Brings New Verification Challenges


In the summer of 2018, Siemens raised a few eyebrows within the verification community when we acquired Sarokal, based in Finland. What that community did not piece together at the time was that Sarokal is the leader in 5G testing and has a seasoned team of people that have work closely with leading telecommunication companies to provide hardware and software solutions for fronthaul system test... » read more

The Debug Problem…


While semiconductor verification techniques have evolved considerably over the last 25 years, the debug of design problems found during verification has barely changed. New algorithms including machine learning, visualization approaches, and problem-solving ideas allow a different approach to debugging that saves up to an order of magnitude in debug time. Since the inception of Hardware Desc... » read more

The Hidden Costs of Open Source


It is often implied that if you use an open source processor core there are no costs associated with using it. Of course, the RTL may be free of a license fee and royalties and it might be possible to access a free of charge toolchain for RISC-V, but there are plenty of hidden costs associated with using the core in a real integrated circuit design. If you are using the core in a product... » read more

Practical Processor Verification


Custom processors are making a resurgence, spurred on by the early success of the RISC-V ISA and the ecosystem that is rapidly building around it. But this shift is amid questions about whether processor verification has become a lost art. Years ago custom processors were common. But as the market consolidated around a handful of companies, so did the tools and expertise needed to develop th... » read more

Power Becomes Bigger Concern For Embedded Processors


Power is emerging as the dominant concern for embedded processors even in applications where performance is billed as the top design criteria. This is happening regardless of the end application or the process node. In some high-performance applications, power density and thermal dissipation can limit how fast a processor can run. This is compounded by concerns about cyber and physical secur... » read more

What’s Holding Back Aging Simulation?


Aging simulation supplies information about the long-term behavior before an IC enters into production, providing an important early evaluation of the reliability required by the application and specification. Re-designs due to reliability issues, and over-design with excessive safety margins, are avoided in this way. In addition, the long-term stability can be demonstrated to the customer. ... » read more

Why It’s So Hard To Create New Processors


The introduction, and initial success, of the RISC-V processor ISA has reignited interest in the design of custom processors, but the industry is now grappling with how to verify them. The expertise and tools that were once in the market have been consolidated into the hands of the few companies that have been shipping processor chips or IP cores over the past 20 years. Verification of a pro... » read more

Setting Up RISC-V Implementation Verification


This blog provides an overview of STING’s release mode of operation. STING design verification tool is released to the end user in the form of a self extracting script. The script can be used to install the release package in user’s environment. Once the package is installed, the user needs to set few environment variables before the STING executable can be built. The release package ... » read more

Constraint-Based Verification Of Clock Domain Crossings


There are many measures of the ever-growing size and complexity of semiconductor devices: die area, transistor count, gate count, size of memories, amount of parallel processing and more. All these factors mean more time spent in design, but they also have a major impact on verification. Since virtually all industry studies show verification time and effort growing faster than design, this impa... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


Ansys will acquire Lumerical, a developer of photonic design and simulation tools. "The potential of photonics in applications like 5G, IIoT and autonomous vehicles can only be realized by solving immense multiphysics device and system challenges," said James Pond, co-CEO and CTO of Lumerical. "Together, Lumerical and Ansys are uniquely positioned to provide the necessary solutions, and custome... » read more

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