IP Requires System Context At 6/5/3nm


Driven by each successive generation of semiconductor manufacturing technology, complexity has reached dizzying levels. Every part of the design, verification and manufacturing is more complicated and intense the more transistors are able to be packed onto a die. For these reasons, the entire system must be taken into consideration as a whole – not just as individual building blocks as could ... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


Tools & IP Cadence entered the system design and analysis market with the release of Clarity 3D Solver, which creates S-parameter models for use in signal integrity, power integrity, and electromagnetic compliance analysis. The tool uses a distributed adaptive meshing approach for cloud and on-premises distributed computing and it optimized to distribute a job across multiple low-cost comp... » read more

Heterogeneous Design Creating Havoc With Firmware Versions


Adding different kinds of processing elements into chips is creating system-level incompatibilities because of sometimes necessary, but usually uncoordinated, firmware updates from multiple vendors. In the past, firmware typically was synchronized with other firmware and the chip was verified and debugged. But this becomes much more difficult when multiple heterogeneous processing elements a... » read more

Of Aero Shows And Safety


At the end of February, I attended the Aero Show in India - and what a show it was. So many exhibitors from around the world, including all main players from the commercial and military sides of the aerospace industry. Visitors could see everything required to build a modern aircraft: from small components like specialized ICs, cables and connectors up to big parts, such as the jet engines... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


Tools & IP OneSpin Solutions debuted the Hardware Metric Calculation (HMC) App, which uses automatically extracted design information to calculate key hardware metrics to comply with functional safety standards. In particular, it focuses on automotive and autonomous driving SoCs needing to meet the highest functional safety requirements defined by the ISO 26262 standard. The HMC App calcul... » read more

DO-254 Requirements Traceability


DO-254 enforces a strict requirements-driven process for the development of commercial airborne electronic hardware. For DO-254, requirements must drive the design and verification activities, and requirements traceability helps to ensure this. This paper explains the rationale behind requirements traceability including its purpose and resulting benefits when done correctly. Click here to re... » read more

Clock Domain Crossings in the FPGA World


Clock domain crossing (CDC) issues cause significant amount of failures in ASIC and FPGA devices. As FPGA complexity and performance grows, the influence of CDC issues on design functionality grows even more. This paper outlines CDC issues and their solutions for FPGA designs. Various design techniques are presented together with real-life examples for Xilinx and Intel FPGA devices. More import... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


M&A Ansys will acquire Helic, a provider of electromagnetic crosstalk analysis and signoff tools. Founded in 2000, Helic's tools included pre- and post-LVS EM modeling, inductor synthesis and modeling, and analysis of crosstalk risk. The company's technology will be integrated into a solution for on-chip, 3D integrated circuit and chip-package-system electromagnetics and noise analysis. Th... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


M&A Rambus acquired the assets of Diablo Technologies. Founded in 2003, Diablo Technologies specialized in NVDIMM technologies, but was hit with a patent lawsuit by Netlist in 2013. While Diablo won the lawsuit and several subsequent appeals, it declared bankruptcy in December 2017. Rambus says the technology will provide a foundation for integrating existing DRAM and Flash along with emer... » read more

Deep Learning Hardware: FPGA vs. GPU


FPGAs or GPUs, that is the question. Since the popularity of using machine learning algorithms to extract and process the information from raw data, it has been a race between FPGA and GPU vendors to offer a HW platform that runs computationally intensive machine learning algorithms fast and efficiently. As Deep Learning has driven most of the advanced machine learning applications, it is r... » read more

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