Week 38: Finishing The DAC Program


The DAC executive committee convened last week for a two-day meeting to finalize the technical program. We call this the Wintermeeting, which by tradition is usually held at a destination chosen by the general chair. This year it was my turn and I selected a dude ranch in Wickenburg, Arizona. While the meeting serves the purpose of locking down all the final details for the conference program, ... » read more

Mentor Graphics Buys Tanner EDA


By Ed Sperling & Brian Bailey [getentity id="22017" e_name="Mentor Graphics"] has just purchased [getentity id="22561" e_name="Tanner EDA"] for an undisclosed sum, according to sources close to the deal. The acquisition moves Mentor squarely into the analog and mixed signal tools world, while positioning it to play a much bigger role in the Internet of Things market. Mentor isn't t... » read more

Partition Lines Growing Fuzzy


For as long as most semiconductor engineers can remember, chips with discrete functions started out on a printed circuit board, progressed into chip sets when it made sense and eventually were integrated onto the same die. The primary motivations behind this trend were performance and cost—shorter distance, fewer mask layers, less silicon. But this equation has been changing over the past ... » read more

Week 36: A Trip To Houston


I have to admit it, I am impressed. Actually “impressed” doesn’t really capture it. I’m awed. On Friday we had the DAC Technical Program Committee (TPC) meeting in Houston—147 members of the TPC spent the day discussing the submitted papers. It was quite a scene. All of us were in one large room, with each big table representing one subcommittee. By the end of the day in Houston, the ... » read more

Software-Driven Verification (Part 3)


[getkc id="10" comment="Functional Verification"] has been powered by tools that require hardware to look like the kinds of systems that were being designed two decades ago. Those limitations are putting chips at risk and a new approach to the problem is long overdue. Semiconductor Engineering sat down with Frank Schirrmeister, group director, product marketing for System Development Suite at [... » read more

Plunify: FPGA Design Closure


The number of EDA startups has plummeted around the globe, and nowhere is this more evident than in Singapore. In fact, there is exactly one EDA startup in that country—[getentity id="22672" e_name="Plunify"]—and even that isn't so new. Plunify started life in 2009 as a cloud-based startup, whose mission was to provide public cloud compute services to companies developing FPGAs. While th... » read more

Bigger Systems, Bigger Profits


Markets work in very mysterious ways. Technology that should be a slam dunk—think 2.5D with its promise of re-usable analog IP and faster performance, for example—are still hobbling along because no one wants to deal with the risk of a new architectural and manufacturing approach. They haven't even shown up yet in servers, where price is almost irrelevant. At the same time (no pun intended)... » read more

Tools And Flows In 2015


This year more than 26 people provided predictions for 2015. Most of these came from the EDA industry, so the results may be rather biased. However, ecosystems are coming closer together in many parts of the semiconductor food chain, meaning that the EDA companies often can see what is happening in dependent industries and in the system design houses. Thus their predictions may have already res... » read more

Tech Talk: Formal Discussion


Pratik Mahajan, senior R&D manager for verification at Synopsys, talks about how to use simulation plus formal verification. [youtube vid=TjO8up0nPGg] » read more

Week 33: Changes To The DAC Show Floor


At this point in my blogging/vlogging career I’m assuming I have an audience of thousands who hang on my every word. But the few of you left (okay, so this is tongue in cheek… I have in fact seen the number of YouTube views!) who have not seen my DAC TV interview with Brian Fuller (below) need to know that we are changing DAC exhibit hours and moving the evening receptions on Monday and Tue... » read more

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