Market Realities


The speculation about EDA’s future—will it consolidate, will it be incorporated into large IDMs or foundries—has surfaced again. The reason this time is that EDA is in a retrenchment period as the semiconductor industry grapples with increasing complexity, multiple options ranging from multi-patterning to stacked die to more third-party IP, and the rising cost of complex SoCs at the mo... » read more

Experts At The Table: The Trouble With Low-Power Verification


By Ed Sperling Low-Power/High-Performance Engineering sat down to discuss low-power verification with Leah Clark, associate technical director at Broadcom; Erich Marschner, product marketing manager at Mentor Graphics; Cary Chin, director of marketing for low-power solutions at Synopsys; and Venki Venkatesh, senior director of engineering at Atrenta. What follows are excerpts of that conversat... » read more

Unified Power Intent


The next version of the Unified Power Format has been approved, bridging the major differences between UPF/IEEE 1801 and the Common Power Format. For anyone who works in low-power verification, this is very good news. The new standard is the result of an unprecedented collaboration by chipmakers and EDA companies, and the people who devised a solution to this problem deserve a big pat on the... » read more

A Call To Action: How 20nm Will Change IC Design


The 20nm process node represents a turning point for the electronics industry. While it brings tremendous power, performance and area advantages, it also comes with new challenges in such areas as lithography, variability, and complexity. The good news is that these become manageable challenges with 20nm-aware EDA tools when they are used within end-to-end, integrated design flows based on a �... » read more

New Issues In Signoff


By Ed Sperling Signoff has always been a challenge at every stage of an SoC design flow. No matter how good a design looks, or how well a prototype works, there are still problems that can crop up at any stage of the design flow all the way into manufacturing that can leave engineering teams shaking their heads. Even at mainstream process nodes, respins are common. At advanced nodes—part... » read more

Parallel Universes


There are no rules for knowing when to step out of the box. Good timing is everything, and that may have been one of the greatest talents of the late Steve Jobs. Knowing when, in Apple’s terminology, to “Think Different,” is every bit as important as the act of thinking differently—particularly when you realize that most of Apple’s big wins since the iPod stormed onto the consumer ele... » 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

Who Owns What And Why


Who’s calling the shots these days—and how long they’ll continue calling the shots—is turning out to be as much conjecture as playing the futures exchange. There are so many changes underway that even engineers are crossing boundaries no one ever expected and ending up in companies outside of IC design or moving from seemingly far afield into the design world. Still, there are some c... » read more

Experts At The Table: Multipatterning


By Ed Sperling Semiconductor Manufacturing & Design sat down with Michael White, physical verification product line manager at Mentor Graphics; Luigi Capodieci, R&D fellow at GlobalFoundries; Lars Liebmann, IBM distinguished engineer; Rob Aitken, ARM fellow; Jean-Pierre Geronimi, CAD director at STMicroelectronics; and Kuang-Kuo Lin, director of foundry design enablement at Samsung El... » read more

Investment Options


It's clear that something fundamental has changed in the semiconductor manufacturing industry. What's less clear is how this will play out over the long term. Intel's agreement to invest more than $4 billion in ASML to ensure the continued development of EUV and 450mm wafer technology is more than just a one-off deal. It's a very public recognition that the astronomical cost of design and ma... » read more

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