Achieving RTL-To-Netlist Equivalence


Running quality tests and regression at RTL level, and even fixing all discovered design bugs does not guarantee the flawless hardware design. To make sure there are no bugs in the target hardware, there is a need to ensure flawless transformation of RTL code to the technology-dependent netlist. This in turns sets the requirements for the “design-for-implementation” coding, where designers ... » read more

It Takes A Village… To Develop And Verify SoCs


In my last blog post from 2017, “Design Chains Will Drive The Top 5 EDA Trends In 2018,” I had pointed to the importance of ecosystems for electronics development in general. From an EDA perspective, it also takes a village to shepherd the actual chip development with its complex verification and software development tasks. And the types of partnerships often depend on the application domai... » read more

Predictions: Methodologies And Tools


Predictions are divided into four posts this year. Part one covered markets and drivers. The second part looked at manufacturing, devices and companies and this part will cover methodologies and tools. In addition, the outlook from EDA executives will be provided in a separate post. Intellectual property As designs get larger, it should be no surprise that the size of the [getkc id="43" kc_... » read more

Achieving ISO 26262 Software Tool Confidence For Improved Automotive Functional Safety


Achieving ISO 26262 Software Tool Confidence for Improved Automotive Functional Safety The rapid adoption of advanced electronic systems in automobiles has prompted the automotive industry to develop the ISO 26262 functional safety standard to address the potential risks associated with failures in these systems. ISO 26262 is derived from the more general IEC 61508 standard and defines requirem... » read more

The Week In Review: Design


M&A Barco Silex, now named Silex Inside, split from parent company Barco in a management buyout in partnership with a group of private investors lead by Dutch investment company Vehold BV. The company will continue its focus on security, video compression, and interface IP, along with design services. Tools & IP Mentor is making a version of its HyperLynx design rule checking tool ... » read more

Follow The Moving Money


Semiconductor economics are changing by market, by region, and by product node and packaging type, adding new complexity into decisions about which technology to use for which products and why. Money is the common denominator in all of these decisions, whether it's measured by return on invested capital, quarterly profits, or long-term investments that can include acquisitions, organic growt... » read more

EDA, IP Sales Up 8%


The EDA sector continues to exhibit solid growth, increasing 8% to $2.2262 billion in Q3, up from $2.0937 billion in the same period in 2016, according to the most recent stats from the ESD Alliance Market Statistics Service. The four-quarter moving average was up 11.5%, year over year. While all of the numbers were up, two areas showed extraordinary growth. One involved Japan, which showed ... » read more

Circuit-Level Aging Simulations Predict The Long-Term Behavior Of ICs


Reliability is a major criterion for integrated circuits (ICs) in safety critical applications, such as automotive, medical, or aviation electronics. A particular effect that contributes to wear-out is device (i.e. transistor) degradation. Its impact on the circuit behavior can be verified by circuit level aging simulations, which are offered by various EDA vendors. However, reasonable results ... » read more

Design Chains Will Drive The Top 5 EDA Trends In 2018


In my prediction piece last year, I made seven trend predictions. Looking back, I did very well compared to what actually happened. For 2018, I am cutting it down to five trends that will impact EDA, but in my mind a lot of the trends will be driven by the ever-evolving ecosystem of design chains from IP though semiconductor to systems and to OEMs. While HBO’s 'Game of Thrones' comes to a con... » read more

EDA Challenges Machine Learning


Over the past few years, [getkc id="305" kc_name="machine learning"] (ML) has evolved from an interesting new approach that allows computers to beat champions at chess and Go, into one that is touted as a panacea for almost everything. While there is clearly a lot of hype surrounding this, it appears that machine learning can produce a better outcome for many tasks in the EDA flow than even the... » read more

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