‘Good’ Vs. ‘Good Enough’


By Ed Sperling The decision for when a chip is ready for tapeout is changing—both in time and sometimes in terms of who’s actually making that decision—as the amount of software being developed by hardware companies continues to grow. At the root of this shift are two very different concepts about what constitutes a market-ready product. For SoC engineers, fixing bugs after a chip has... » read more

The Future Of IP


By Ed Sperling The rapid consolidation of the IP business is raising big questions about who will be left, whether new companies will join, and what it means for chipmakers looking to buy IP. In a period of one month Synopsys bought Virage Logic, which had just finished a buying spree of its own with the acquisitions of ARC and the IP business of NXP, and Cadence bought Denali. So what exac... » read more

Synopsys Plus Virage: Combinatorics Or Common Sense?


By Jack Harding It should be no surprise. The industry has been consolidating and expanding and consolidating for nearly 40 years. So when Virage Logic was gobbled up by Synopsys and Denali was ingested by Cadence, it is really a lot more of the same. Or is it? There is a difference. Synopsys has made it crystal clear that its definition of EDA now permanently includes IP. Not that acquirin... » read more

Special Report: Using FPGAs For 3D Stacking


By Ed Sperling Xilinx is developing a 3D architecture for its FPGAs and Actel has been approached by SoC makers to use its flash-based FPGA as a layer in a 3D IC stack. Both approaches could radically alter the fundamental equation about the tradeoffs between FPGAs and ASICs—particularly the power and performance overhead normally associated with programmable logic. Xilinx declined to com... » read more

IP Integration Creates Challenges For Power


By Ann Steffora Mutschler Managing power when integrating IP is becoming a critical issue at advanced process nodes—and the problem is getting worse. For starters, static power leakage that occurs when the transistors are “off” gets worse at each node. On top of that, multiple states to minimize dynamic power leakage have pushed complexity even further. Throw in third-party IP from m... » read more

Making IP Tradeoffs For Power


By Ann Steffora Mutschler Power may be expensive, but just turning off sections of a chip, lowering the voltage or using low-power manufacturing processes have their own costs. Whether using power, or managing it, there is a price. As Brani Buric, executive vice president at Virage Logic says, “Power is not free.” But fortunately, other things in a design can be traded off in order to a... » read more

IP’s Ecosystem Race


By Ann Steffora Mutschler As the semiconductor industry moves from older manufacturing nodes to newer ones what users want from IP providers is changing. So is the way IP providers are answering those needs. Mirroring the broader semiconductor industry’s recognition that it’s simply too expensive, too difficult and too time consuming to do everything alone—the very basis of the IP sec... » read more

Low-Power Architectures Go Mainstream


By Pallab Chatterjee Until recently, low power engineering has been defined by the automated use of EDA tools in the design flow to help cut back on peak dynamic power. The new generation of mobile and video products has forced a change in that methodology. There are two other fast rising architectural approaches. The first is multicore, which is prevalent in new product introductions fr... » read more

Differentiating Embedded Processors


By Ann Steffora Mutschler The embedded processor world addresses a vast range of applications – from the datacenter to the biomedical device – all of which have critical power needs that vary with the use. Power concerns continue to dominate the embedded system whether it is avoid a noisy fan in a TV set-top box, allow video on a mobile phone or minimize pricey cooling costs in the datac... » read more

Power Trip Advisor


By Geoffrey James There’s never been a greater demand for power-efficient silicon. As consumer electronic devices get smaller, with increased functionality, battery power becomes a premium resource. At the same time, “Green IT” is a major corporate trend, and the best way to be environmentally sensitive (while saving on energy costs) is to buy technology that ekes the maximum computing o... » read more

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