Thoughts On DAC While Watching The World Cup


Are you following the World Cup? I am. For those of you who don’t know me, I’m German, so soccer (rather, Fussball) is much more up my alley than football or baseball will ever be. When it comes to DAC planning, we are still at the fun, early stage of casting about widely for ideas and feedback. Mostly now we’re looking to prompt a bit of creative discussion, a challenge since the majo... » read more

Blog Review: July 2


Mentor’s Nazita Saye has reservations about driverless cars. Sometimes it’s actually fun to drive—and sometimes it isn’t. Cadence’s Brian Fuller is a bit more optimistic about driverless cars. He says that from the standpoint of safety, efficiency and environment, autonomous vehicles will be a big step forward—if and when some critical problems are solved. And along the same... » read more

Does IoT Change Design?


Over the past few months, and especially at DAC, I have been struck by the amount of interest in IoT and its impact on semiconductor design. In this post I will look at how IoT impacts the life of system designers — and explore if it really changes anything. Important source of semiconductor growth IoT is clearly important to investors, semiconductor makers, IP and EDA because it expands ... » read more

Can EDA Keep Growing?


Slower progress at the leading edge of process technology, coupled with rising costs and fewer design starts, are changing the economics of the EDA world. Not surprisingly, there is almost a direct correlation between the shrinking number of startups in the field and the number of customers working on the most advanced nodes. So what exactly does this mean for the EDA world? Big changes, for... » read more

Without Moore’s Law: EDA


Semiconductor Engineering is examining the assertion about the end of Moore’s Law in a number of different ways. The special report, “Will 7nm and 5nm really happen?” looked at the technical aspects related to continuing into finer geometries. “Moore’s Law Tail No Longer Wagging the Dog” asked the question about the economics of people being able to afford to go to the latest node. ... » read more

Blog Review: June 4


Sonics' Drew Wingard looks at the challenges of IP integration, from standards to re-use to the need for intelligence on the network. Given the focus on IP integration, as well as the myriad challenges, this is very timely information. ARM's Karthik Ranjan has an interesting theory about why Java developers wear glasses. Ansys' Justin Nescott unearths the five most interesting engineering... » read more

Executive Insight: Aart de Geus


SE: What worries you most? De Geus: Everything I do is with high intensity, and what is of super high intensity right now—and there are challenges and opportunities in it—is that we have the confluence of some very big changes right now happening at the same time. On the technology side, there are multiple intersections. One is the intersection of another 10 years of Moore’s Law—finF... » read more

Easing The Path To Evolution


On the surface, revolutionary changes in EDA seem unlikely due to the risk of replacing costly tools, flows and methodologies. But are they really? The answer depends on whom you ask. For Part One, click here. Risk is a big part of the equation here. “There are always pioneers in an organization and what you need to do is find someone who is willing to take some risk and typically it’s o... » read more

Executive Insight: Prakash Narain


SE: What’s your biggest concern? Narain: We are a smaller company, and ultimately we compete on the basis of the quality of the solutions we provide to customers. What’s the value proposition? How many X better will our solution be compared to the existing solutions that are in deployed in the market? You make a projection about it in your mind, and you make investments, and until they�... » read more

EDA Economics Changing


From most perspectives, there has never been a better time to be in the EDA business. Automation tools are in demand as complexity rises, and new companies jumping into the semiconductor business are starting out with commercially available tools rather than developing their own—and taking years, sometimes even decades, to replace them. EDA’s slice of the semiconductor market consistent... » read more

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