Google Project Ara And The Low-Power Imperative


You’ve no doubt seen the slides: 50 billion Internet of Things (IoT) devices by 2020. That’s an amazing number, but consider this: What if they each draw 1W? All things begin equal, we’d have to build another 50 nuclear power plants in the world to handle that additional energy requirement. (Something tells me that outcome is unrealistic). Power takes center stage as we evolve into ... » read more

Blog Review: April 9


Mentor’s Colin Walls discovered an interesting video of the software programming learning process—a teacher responding literally to commands from his students on how to make a jam sandwich. It’s harder than it looks. Cadence’s Brian Fuller captures a speech by his colleague, Sanjiv Taneja, about the need for a comprehensive verification approach and smart IP reuse. The overriding th... » read more

System Bits: Feb. 4


Speeding Access To Information Big data today is usually stored on multiple hard disks on a number of machines across an Ethernet network, but this storage architecture considerably increases the time it takes to access the information. Researchers at MIT have developed a storage system for big-data analytics they claim can dramatically reduce the time it takes to access information. The sy... » read more

SpyGlass Flow For Xilinx FPGA


As the cost of doing ASIC design skyrockets, FPGAs are becoming an attractive alternative for system-on-chip (SoC) types of design. Large numbers of increasingly complex designs are now done with FPGAs, making verification a major task. Besides the usual issues of width mismatch, connectivity or synthesis-simulation mismatch, there are also problems related to multiple asynchronous clock domain... » read more

Current Generation Of FPGAs Pose New Power And Reliability Challenges


Today’s FPGAs are being used in a wide variety of applications such as consumer electronics, computer and storage, automotive electronics, and mission critical applications. The flexibility to configure the device based on its need, the ability to reprogram its functions, and the hardware parallelism it offers to quickly process very large amounts of data are some of the reasons why off-the-s... » read more

Trending Back To ASICs


True to its cyclical nature, the semiconductor industry is swinging back toward ASICs from more diversified approaches such as FPGAs. This dynamic is evident at companies such as Apple. “At one point we thought Apple was being a contrarian,” said Drew Wingard, CTO at Sonics. “Everybody else on the systems side was shedding their silicon people. The easiest counterpoint to what Apple wa... » read more

Experts At The Table: Debug


By Ed Sperling Semiconductor Engineering sat down with Galen Blake, senior verification engineer at Altera; Warren Stapleton, senior fellow at Advanced Micro Devices; Stephen Bailey, director of solutions marketing at Mentor Graphics; Michael Sanie, senior director of verification marketing at Synopsys. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: The amount of IP is increasing and i... » read more

Blog Review: Oct. 3


Cadence’s Brian Fuller rolls out a twice-monthly TV program called “Unhinged,” which he bills as a cross between The Daily Show, Letterman and ESPN. The intro is a classic. Who needs coffee? Synopsys’ Karen Bartleson interviews Bob Metcalfe, co-inventor of Ethernet, creator of Metcalfe’s Law—which has withstood the test of time quite well—on why Ethernet still really important.... » read more

FPGA Verification with Assertions: Why Bother?


This paper provides a practical, easy, step-by- step set of instructions on how to add assertions to your RTL design. By following the simple guidelines provided in this paper you will benefit by cutting simulation debugging time in half, as well as finding very complex bugs that are likely to escape traditional simulation without assertions. To download this white paper, click here. » read more

Experts At The Table: SoC Prototyping


By Ann Steffora Mutschler System-Level Design sat down to discuss SoC prototyping with Hillel Miller, pre-silicon verification/emulation manager at Freescale Semiconductor; Frank Schirrmeister, group director, product marketing, system development suite at Cadence; and Mick Posner, director of product marketing at Synopsys. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SLD: When it comes... » read more

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