Week In Review: Design, Low Power

By Jesse Allen - 30 Nov, 2018 - Comments: 0

Tools & IP UltraSoC debuted functional safety-focused Lockstep Monitor, a set of configurable IP blocks that are protocol aware and can be used to cross-check outputs, bus transactions, code execution, and register states between two or more redundant systems. It supports all common lockstep / redundancy architectures, including full dual-redundant lockstep, split/lock, master/checker, and... » read more

Heterogeneous Computing Raises The Bar For Functional Verification

By Raik Brinkmann - 29 Nov, 2018 - Comments: 0

If there’s one thing certain in chip development, it’s that every innovation in architecture or semiconductor technology puts more pressure on the functional verification process. The increase in gate count for each new technology node stresses tool capacity. Every step up in complexity makes it harder to find deep, corner-case bugs. The dramatic growth in SoC designs brings software into p... » read more

Blog Review: Nov. 14

By Jesse Allen - 14 Nov, 2018 - Comments: 0

Mentor's Jin Hou and Joe Hupcey III explain two fundamental characteristics of formal analysis that simplify things for the formal algorithm and provide better wall clock run time and memory usage performance. Cadence's Paul McLellan shares highlights from five presentations all discussing what's behind AI's movement to edge devices, the vast amount of investment going into the area, and whe... » read more

The Impact of Domain Crossing on Safety

By Brian Bailey - 31 Oct, 2018 - Comments: 0

Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss problems associated with domain crossings with Alex Gnusin, design verification technologist for Aldec; Pete Hardee, director, product management for Cadence; Joe Hupcey, product manager and verification product technologist for Mentor, a Siemens Business; Sven Beyer, product manager design verification for OneSpin; and Godwin Maben, applications en... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power

By Jesse Allen - 26 Oct, 2018 - Comments: 0

Tools OneSpin launched a formal verification tool that integrates with all major simulators, coverage databases and viewers, and chip design verification planning tools to provide a comprehensive view of verification progress. Comprised of two new formal apps, it can identify unreachable coverage points and provide them to the simulator to reduce wasted effort. Synopsys released the latest ... » read more

Integrating Results And Coverage From Simulation And Formal

By Tom Anderson - 25 Oct, 2018 - Comments: 0

Not so long ago, formal verification was considered an exotic technology used only by specialists for specific verification challenges such as cache coherency. As chips have grown ceaselessly in size and complexity, the traditional verification method of simulation could not keep pace. The task of generating and running enough tests consumed enormous resources in terms of engineers, simulation ... » read more

AI Chips Must Get The Floating-Point Math Right

By Sergio Marchese - 27 Sep, 2018 - Comments: 0

Most AI chips and hardware accelerators that power machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) applications include floating-point units (FPUs). Algorithms used in neural networks today are often based on operations that use multiplication and addition of floating-point values, which subsequently need to be scaled to different sizes and for different needs. Modern FPGAs such as Intel Arria-10 ... » read more

Blog Review: Sept. 19

By Jesse Allen - 19 Sep, 2018 - Comments: 0

Applied Materials' David Thompson shares the new DARPA program that is focused on using correlated electrons to develop a new type of switch with quantum effects, potentially leading to unprecedented switching speeds. Mentor's Joe Hupcey III argues that for the most effective formal analysis, assertions should be as simple as possible and shares some tips on decomposing big assertions. Ca... » read more

Gaps In Verification Metrics

By Ann Mutschler - 23 Aug, 2018 - Comments: 0

As design complexity has exploded, the verification effort has likewise grown exponentially, with many different types of verification being applied to different classes of design. A recent panel discussion with leading chipmakers examined this topic in an effort to shed light on design health and quality, measuring the success of verification, knowing when verification is complete, being on... » read more

Bugs That Kill

By Brian Bailey - 23 Aug, 2018 - Comments: 3

Are simulation-resistant superbugs stifling innovation? That is a question Craig Shirley, president and CEO of Oski Technology, asked a collection of semiconductor executives over dinner. Semiconductor Engineering was invited to hear that discussion and to present the key points of the discussion. To promote free conversation, the participants, who are listed below, asked not to be quoted di... » read more

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tag: formal

Week In Review: Design, Low Power

Heterogeneous Computing Raises The Bar For Functional Verification

Blog Review: Nov. 14

The Impact of Domain Crossing on Safety

Week In Review: Design, Low Power

Integrating Results And Coverage From Simulation And Formal

AI Chips Must Get The Floating-Point Math Right

Blog Review: Sept. 19

Gaps In Verification Metrics

Bugs That Kill