Why Parallelization Is So Hard


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to talk about parallelization efforts within EDA with Andrea Casotto, chief scientist for Altair; Adam Sherer, product management group director in the System & Verification Group of Cadence; Harry Foster, chief scientist for Mentor, a Siemens Business; Vladislav Palfy, global manager for applications engineering at OneSpin; Vigyan Singhal, chief Oski for ... » read more

When Bugs Escape


Bugs are a fact of life, and they always have been. But verification methodologies may not have evolved fast enough to keep up with the growing size and complexity of systems. The types of bugs are changing, too. Some people call these corner cases. Others call them outliers. Still another group refers to them as simulation-resistance superbugs. In markets such as automotive, the notion o... » read more

Architecting For AI


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to talk about what is needed today to enable artificial intelligence training and inferencing with Manoj Roge, vice president, strategic planning at Achronix; Ty Garibay, CTO at Arteris IP; Chris Rowen, CEO of Babblelabs; David White, distinguished engineer at Cadence; Cheng Wang, senior VP engineering at Flex Logix; and Raik Brinkmann, president and CEO of O... » read more

New Shifts In Automotive Design


Four big shifts in automotive design and usage are beginning to converge—electrification, increasing connectivity, autonomous driving and car sharing—creating a ripple effect across the automotive electronics supply chain. Over the past few years the electronic content of cars and other vehicles has surged, with electrical systems replacing traditional mechanical and electro-mechanical s... » read more

Big Challenges, Changes For Debug


By Ann Steffora Mutschler & Ed Sperling Debugging a chip always has been difficult, but the problem is getting worse at 7nm and 5nm. The number of corner cases is exploding as complexity rises, and some bugs are not even on anyone's radar until well after devices are already in use by end customers. An estimated 39% of verification engineering time is spent on debugging activities the... » read more

Rediscovering Coverage Insurance


When coverage comes up in conversation, if it comes up at all, it’s always a matter of car, home or health insurance. Coverage and functional verification are unlikely to be used in that discussion, or any other for that matter. That’s too bad because engineering groups grapple with when is enough verification enough, like some kind of coverage insurance. Oh sure, simulation and emulatio... » read more

Fault Simulation Reborn


Fault simulation, one of the oldest tools in the EDA industry toolbox, is receiving a serious facelift after it almost faded from existence. In the early days, fault simulation was used to grade the quality of manufacturing test vectors. That task was replaced almost entirely by [getkc id="173" comment="scan test"] and automatic test pattern generation (ATPG). Today, functional safety is cau... » read more

DVCon Europe: 2 Days Of Verification Presentations To Enthusiastic Attendees


Design verification was on full display last week in Munich, Germany, as DVCon Europe offered two full days of more than 30 sessions. Attendees could choose from 16 tutorials, two panels, three keynotes and 16 technical presentations or wander through a small but active exhibit floor, with exhibitors that included OneSpin. The conference for engineers by engineers is meant to be educational,... » read more

Building Chips That Can Learn


The idea that devices can learn optimal behavior rather than relying on more generalized hardware and software is driving a resurgence in artificial intelligence, machine leaning, and cognitive computing. But architecting, building and testing these kinds of systems will require broad changes that ultimately could impact the entire semiconductor ecosystem. Many of these changes are wel... » read more

Customizable Apps – Avoiding The Pitfalls Of EDA Frameworks


For those of us involved with EDA tools in the late '80s and early '90s, the word “frameworks” brings back memories of rigid methodology and use models, coupled with CAD complexity. Cadence and Mentor, among others, proposed the EDA framework as a mechanism to provide design revision management coupled with tool flow control (I can already imagine your eyes glazing over). For some situat... » read more

← Older posts Newer posts →