Mythbusters: Moore’s Law, Low Power And The Future Of Chip Design


By Ed Sperling Contrary to popular belief, Moore’s Law is not in serious trouble. Nor will active power in most devices be reduced to the millivolt or microvolt level anytime in the near future. And chip design will not disappear, be relegated to the push of a button or move offshore from one low-cost wage location to the next until ultimately it gets to a place where no one is paid a salary... » read more

Experts At The Table: Building A Better Mousetrap


Low-Power Design sat down with Richard Zarr, chief technologist for the PowerWise Brand at National Semiconductor; Jon McDonald, technical marketing engineer in Mentor Graphics’ design creation business unit; Prasad Subramaniam, vice president of design technology at eSilicon; Steve Carlson, vice president of marketing at Cadence Design Systems, and David Allen, product director for power at ... » read more

When It Comes To Intellectual Property, Size Matters


By Geoffrey James Intellectual property was once seen as the new growth market for EDA. Dozens of firms – large and small – jumped on the IP bandwagon, attracted to the “build once, sell many times” business model. “As late as 2004, the industry was still thinking that as much as 90% of SoCs would be reused IP,” said EDA consultant Gary Smith. The IP segment, however, hasn�... » read more

How to Future-Proof A Hardware Designer


I’m at DAC this week, where there is a lot of interest and discussion on what’s going on in design and what’s going to happen to designers. One conversation with a university professor gave me a “eureka” moment. The professor had a student who really loved RTL design. The student asked him where he could get a job doing this, and the professor suggested the student move to India... » read more

Who’s In Control Now?


By Ed Sperling Power is shifting across the design industry in multiple ways and sometimes across multiple continents, driven by complexity and cost pressures and entirely new forms of competition. On one side of the equation, foundries are dictating more of what goes on up front in the design cycle. Design for manufacturing is a prerequisite at 45nm and below, and they’re the ones dictatin... » read more

ESL: Reality, Or A Pigment Of Your Fig Neuton?


By Clive "Max" Maxfield One of the questions I am often asked is: "Who's really using ESL tools such as modeling and are there any hiccups in the flow?" Another common question is: "What actually is ESL?" Perhaps we should address the latter question first. To some folks, ESL (electronic system level) means designing at a very high level of abstraction prior to making any hardware-softwar... » read more

Boost For Verification Methodologies


By Ed Sperling Synopsys introduced enhancements to its Verification Methodology Manual and Cadence began detailing new enhancements in its Open Verification Methodology. Both programs are in beta, yet they offer steps forward toward easing one of the biggest problem areas in chip development. With verification still consuming 70% or more of the non-recurring engineering costs of semicondu... » read more

The Argument For Low Power In The Data Center


By Ann Steffora Mutschler For budgetary and ‘green’ motives, enterprise IT customers are demanding higher energy efficiency from their servers. This ultimately rests on the shoulders of the processor designer as the MPU is a significant source of power usage. Interestingly, the hidden and ugly truth is that for most data center managers, the cost of electricity for that data center is... » read more

Challenges At 32nm And Beyond


Wally Rhines, chairman and CEO of Mentor Graphics, talks about what's changing in design, the effect of low power, and who's going to be doing the most advanced designs. [youtube vid=_hDk9bx4gXo] » read more

ESL…Is It What You Want Or What You Need?


Last week I was sitting in a meeting having an extended discussion on what information and benefits could be derived from an ESL transaction model of a system.  It reminded me of the words of those immortal philosophers, The Rolling Stones, “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you just might find, you get what you need”.  I believe this is a philosophy that ne... » read more

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