Automotive IC Design Drives Simulation Innovation


By Roberto Stella, STMicroelectronics and Ahmed Eisawy, Mentor Graphics STMicroelectronics invented the Bipolar, CMOS, DMOS (BCD) technology for the intelligent power applications demanded by automotive ICs. This technology is widely-adopted by the automotive IC industry. But, designing automotive ICs is very challenging. It requires innovative techniques to ensure that the ICs can stand u... » read more

Context Is Everything


With consumer and industrial IoT applications, the importance of system context to IC vendors is paramount. No more are the days of developing a chip in isolation; close partnership with systems companies is de rigueur as they provide the use case data that is foundational to development of systems that work. While this makes sense in a smartphone, it’s significantly harder to achieve in a... » read more

FPGA Prototyping Gains Ground


FPGA technology for design prototypes is making new inroads as demands increase for better integration between hardware and software. [gettech id="31071" comment="FPGA"] prototyping, also known as physical prototyping, has been supported by all of the major EDA players for some time, and it has been considered an essential tool for the largest chipmakers, along with emulation and simulation.... » read more

How To Achieve Faster Design Convergence And A Better Design


We find ourselves at an interesting point in the evolution of semiconductor technologies electronic systems as a whole. As Moore’s Law continues to charge forward, tools and workflows continue to adapt to major trends, including: Increasing system design complexity; The increasing digital footprint of both design databases and simulation output data, and New architectures/More-than-Mo... » read more

The Higher Cost Of Automotive


A revolution is occurring under the hoods of vehicles today, as the automotive industry continues to add sophistication via electronics to vehicles at a pace never seen before. But because of the automotive ecosystem’s tiered structure, system companies, IP and embedded software developers and tools vendors must invest more just to participate. Robert Bates, chief safety officer in [getent... » read more

Models Are Dead? Long Live Models


During the first half of this year I had more discussions with customers on models again. Are models back? For what purpose? In short, it looks like models are well adopted and in use for software development. For performance and architecture analysis, however, as a recent presentation from Renesas at CDNLive Japan shows, users just use RTL as that accuracy is required. In combination with emul... » read more

Making Verification Easier


SoC design teams increasingly are confronting complexity in the quest to target application segments, but at the same time they are struggling to more quickly reduce risk in their designs while also speed up testing to make sure everything works. Those often-conflicting goals have transformed [getkc id="10" kc_name="verification"] IP from an interesting concept to a must-have tool for advanc... » read more

What’s Next For UVM?


The infrastructure for much of the chip verification being done today is looking dated and limited in scope. Design has migrated to new methodologies, standards and tools that are being introduced to deal with heterogeneous integration, more customization, and increased complexity. Verification methodologies started appearing soon after the release of SystemVerilog. Initially they were inten... » read more

Verification Engine Disconnects


Moving verification data seamlessly between emulation, simulation, FPGA prototyping and formal verification engines may be possible on paper, but it is proving more difficult to implement in the real world. [getkc id="10" kc_name="Verification"] still consumes the most time and money in the design process. And while the amount of time spent on verification in complex designs has held relativ... » read more

Executive Insight: Raik Brinkmann


[getperson id="11306" comment="Raik Brinkmann"], president and CEO of [getentity id="22395" e_name="OneSpin Solutions"], sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to discuss where and why formal verification is gaining traction, and how it fits alongside other verification approaches. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: [getkc id="33" kc_name="Formal"] has been around for a whi... » read more

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