Redefining Progress


After lots of wrangling over the whether Moore's Law is alive, dead, or languishing at somewhere in between, that discussion now seems about as relevant as the look and feel of Apple's early Macintosh operating system—an issue that back in the 1980s spawned a very public war with Microsoft. Today that argument is about as relevant as whether Betamax was better than VHS. Whether it's Moor... » read more

Manufacturing And Packaging Changes For 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

EDA Up, Japan Continues To Slide


EDA numbers grew 5.7% in the third quarter, propelled by demand for PCB tools in the booming automotive market and IP sales around the globe, according to the latest statistics from the EDA Consortium. The classic EDA tools business was down slightly for the quarter, but PCB tools jumped 9.7%. "There are new capabilities for packaging and wiring for automotive," said Wally Rhines, board ... » read more

Week 32: So Many Good Proposals


On Monday we had our marathon conference call to review all invited content – that is, special sessions in EDA, embedded, automotive, and security, as well as panels and tutorials. Wow! I was blown away, and it seems we must have a record year for submitted content. I counted 27 submissions just for tutorials, a niche part of DAC (though an important one at that). There is a DAC record for em... » read more

What Will Change In Design For 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

Invionics: EDA Development Platform


There has been a dearth of EDA startups over the past year. In fact, if you check out the Knowledge Center for companies founded in 2014 you will find exactly one - [getentity id="22834" comment="Pollen Technology"], a metrology company. In 2013 there were four, one of which was [getentity id="22413" comment="Invionics"]. Now before we get excited about a new EDA startup—and yes, it is an EDA... » read more

Signal And Power Integrity Cross Paths


Signal integrity and power integrity historically have been relatively independent issues, and engineers with expertise in one area generally operate independently of the other. But as more power domains are added to conserve energy and allow more features, as voltages are reduced to save battery life, and as dynamic power becomes more of a concern at advanced nodes, these worlds are suddenly m... » read more

Electronic System Design In 2015: Busting Through Bottlenecks


It’s December, and that means it’s time to review what just happened in electronics design in the hopes that it will help light a path into the New Year. To simplify a year’s work in a global, sophisticated, ever-changing industry, you could say 2014 hinged on to two main tipping points: The marriage of EDA and IP was consummated. The road to the future forked. Let’s look at #1... » read more

Conflicting Needs For IoT Edge Designs


The mad rush has begun to hype the [getkc id="76" comment="Internet of Things"], but the path forward isn't quite as straightforward as the marketers would like it to be. ICs used at the edge of the IoT—the ones that gather information to be controlled by smart phones or tablets and transmitted to devices for processing and data analytics—need to be designed differently than the initial for... » read more

Measuring Verification Accuracy


[getkc id="10" kc_name="Verification"] is the unbounded challenge that continues to confound engineering teams across the globe, who want to know when "enough" is "good enough" to proceed to tapeout. The answer is not straightforward, and it includes more variables than in the past, particularly around power. Harry Foster, chief verification scientist at [getentity id="22017" e_name="Mentor ... » read more

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