The Essential Tool Kit


By Ann Steffora Mutschler Is there an essential chip design tool kit today that has only the ‘must haves?’ Sure, this sounds like a straightforward question, but the answer really depends on what process node the design will be manufacturing on. According to Jon McDonald, technical marketing engineer for the design and creation business at Mentor Graphics, there’s actually nothi... » read more

The New Mixed-Signal Flow


By Ann Steffora Mutschler We are on the cusp of the mixed-signal era. Traditional mixed-signal design environments, in which analog and digital parts are implemented separately, no longer are sufficient. They lead to excess iteration and prolonged design cycle time. Today’s mixed-signal designs require a new approach that enables design teams to be as efficient as possible productivity... » read more

The Growing Confidence Gap In Verification


By Ed Sperling It’s no surprise that verification is getting more difficult at each new process node. What’s less obvious is just how deep into organizations the job of verifying SoCs and ASICs now extends. Functional verification used to be a well-defined job at the back end of the design flow. It has evolved into a multi-dimensional, multi-group challenge, beginning at the earliest st... » read more

Calculating Emulation’s Complex Cost Of Ownership


By Ann Steffora Mutschler Hardware emulation or hardware-assisted verification –whichever term you choose—has been around for decades. But until recently it has seen only modest adoption due to the high cost, long set-up time, power and IT requirements, among other things. But with simulation running out of steam between 50 and 100 million gates, this specialized hardware makes a ... » read more

Optimizing And Maintaining A High-Performing Design Environment


To maximize your investment in electronic design automation (EDA) tools, your infrastructure and processes must be optimized for growing and frequently changing design needs. Cadence Client Technology Solutions is dedicated to enhancing EDA tool performance, ensuring stability, and removing critical bottlenecks. Through close collaboration with hundreds of customers worldwide, we have unique in... » read more

The Complexity Of System Development And Verification


By Frank Schirrmeister The electronics industry is undergoing a fast transition towards new paradigms for system development and verification as traditional development methods reach their breaking points. Developing a system development and verification environment can become a costly undertaking, and can involve many direct and sometimes even more hidden cost. To understand the cost aspects,... » read more

Transitioning States


By Ann Steffora Mutschler While the concept of finite state machines is mature, understanding their role in design, the transitions between them and how to verify them are fundamental to managing power in today’s large SoCs. In essence, a finite state machine is a set of inputs and outputs and gate bits that describes the operation of the system. “Transitions happen from one state to... » read more

Design For Power


By Ed Sperling Figuring out a single power budget and mapping out what has become known as holistic power intent for an SoC sounds great on paper, but reality has turned out to be somewhat different. While system architects still call the shots on how a chip is designed, there is a lot more information flowing in all directions further down the design chain these days. Unlike functionality,... » read more

CPU Architectures Get Specific


By Ann Steffora Mutschler SoC and system design is already complicated, but as complexity continues to rise the industry must determine how to maintain sensitivity to power and cost and performance in the CPU architecture. Where does this stand today—not just with architectures and microarchitectures for consumer electronics but all other kinds of applications? What kinds of changes... » read more

The Increasing Challenge Of Reducing Latency


By Ed Sperling When the first mainframe computers were introduced the big challenge was to improve performance by decreasing the latency between spinning reels of tape and the processor—while also increasing the speed at which the processor could crunch ones and zeroes. Fast forward more than six decades and the two issues are now blurred and often confused. Latency is still a drag on per... » read more

← Older posts Newer posts →