Shift Left, Extend Right, Stretch Sideways


The EDA industry has been talking about shift left for a few years, but development flows are now being stretched in two additional ways, extending right to include silicon lifecycle management, and sideways to include safety and security. In addition, safety and security join verification and power as being vertical concerns, and we are increasingly seeing interlinking within those concerns. ... » read more

A New Approach To Design-Stage Layout Optimization Can Speed Time To Tapeout While Improving Power Management


The right tool for the job makes all the difference. Ever try hammering a nail in with a rock? How many nails did you ruin before you gave up? Or try to tighten a crucial bolt by hand? It takes forever, and you just can’t tighten it enough, so everything’s still kind of wobbly? Yeah, that’s kind of what it’s like trying to use an electronic design automation (EDA) tool to do a job it’... » read more

RTL Restructuring Issues


Modification of modules in RTL is the last place in chip design where changes can be made relatively easily before they reach physical design, but it’s still as complicated as the design itself — and it becomes more difficult in 3D-ICs. Jim Schultz, product marketing manager for digital design implementation at Synopsys, talks about grouping and ungrouping, re-parenting, and breaking connec... » read more

RL-Guided Detailed Routing Framework for Advanced Custom Circuits


A technical paper titled "Reinforcement Learning Guided Detailed Routing for Custom Circuits" was published by researchers at UT Austin, Princeton University, and NVIDIA. "This paper presents a novel detailed routing framework for custom circuits that leverages deep reinforcement learning to optimize routing patterns while considering custom routing constraints and industrial design rules. C... » read more

Conquer Placement And Clock Tree Challenges In HPC Designs


High-performance computing (HPC) applications require IC designs with maximum performance. However, as process technology advances, achieving high performance has become increasingly challenging. Designers need digital implementation tools and methodologies that can solve the thorny issues in HPC designs, including placement and clock tree challenges. Placement and clock tree synthesis are c... » read more

Design Considerations and Recent Advancements in Chiplets (UC Berkeley/ Peking University)


A new technical paper titled "Automated Design of Chiplets" was published by researchers at UC Berkeley and Peking University. Abstract: "Chiplet-based designs have gained recognition as a promising alternative to monolithic SoCs due to their lower manufacturing costs, improved re-usability, and optimized technology specialization. Despite progress made in various related domains, the des... » read more

Combination of AI Techniques To Find The Best Ways to Place Transistors on Silicon Chips


A new technical paper titled "AutoDMP: Automated DREAMPlace-based Macro Placement" was published by researchers at NVIDIA. Abstract: "Macro placement is a critical very large-scale integration (VLSI) physical design problem that significantly impacts the design power-performance-area (PPA) metrics. This paper proposes AutoDMP, a methodology that leverages DREAMPlace, a GPU-accelerated place... » read more

Low-Power IC Design Without Compromise


In the process of creating ICs, the digital implementation stage is focused on meeting the performance, power, and area (PPA) targets defined for the design. Traditionally, when talking about PPA metrics, “performance” has been the primary focus, with power and area recovered where possible, after meeting timing. But as designs have moved to smaller, more advanced process nodes, and as s... » read more

EDA, IP Growth Surges Again


EDA tools and IP revenue increased 8.9% in Q3 of 2022 to $3.767 billion, up from $3.458 billion in 2021, according to a just-released report from the ESD Alliance at SEMI. All regions except Japan reported growth, but the numbers were a bit more uneven in Q3 than in recent quarters. For example, total silicon IP dropped 1%, while services revenue grew 20.8%. At the same time, EDA revenue jum... » read more

Shortening Network-on-Chip Development Schedules Using Physical Awareness


Taking physical design into account as early as possible has been a consideration of chip development teams for quite some time. Still, in interactions with customers and partners, 2022 marked a sharp uptick in concerns about whether a design that may be functionally correct can also be implemented using physical implementation flows. Given the intricacies and complexity of network-on-chip (NoC... » read more

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