Verifying Low-Power Designs


By Ed Sperling Power islands and multiple voltages used to be reserved for cell phone and process companies, but as more companies move to 65nm and 45nm process nodes these approaches to saving power—particularly in chips with multiple cores—are becoming mainstream. The problem isn’t in the architecture of the chips, although that certainly brings its own set of challenges. More and m... » read more

Experts At The Table: Rising Complexity Meets Verification


By Ed Sperling Low-Power Engineering sat down to discuss rising complexity and its effects on verification with Barry Pangrle, solutions architect for low power design and verification at Mentor Graphics; Tom Borgstrom, director of solutions marketing at Synopsys; Lauro Rizzatti, vice president of worldwide marketing at EVE, and Prakash Narain, president and CEO Real Intent. What follows are... » 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 Next Problem In Verification


Last week’s blog on OVM vs. VMM was like a match on dry timber, which is probably a bad analogy to make in California these days. Weeding through the comments—both on the record and off, and there was plenty more off the record—it appears there’s plenty of work under way to bridge the two worlds, but there’s an inverse amount of information available to the people who use one or the... » read more

VMM vs. OVM Becomes More Important


For all the talk about VMM vs. OVM and how it doesn’t matter…well, apparently it does.   It’s not that one verification environment is so much better than the other. That’s like saying one religion is better than another. People kill each other over those kinds of statements. And the truth is, there are plenty of people who will argue for and against each side.   Strangely, when... » read more

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