Power Verification Now Required


Today’s verification tasks may seem daunting — and much of it is — but all of it is absolutely necessary to make sure chips operate properly with a larger system. Throw power into the mix and the challenges mount. The good news is that there is no shortage of tools and methodologies to help with these tasks. The bad news is that even the best tools won’t make the challenges disappear... » read more

Toward Smarter Design Automation


In less than two weeks, the EDA industry will convene for its biggest conference of the year, the Design Automation Conference, again in San Francisco. Last year, I “came clean” with a post called “Confessions Of An ESL-Aholic,” pointing out that beyond high-level synthesis, a significant shift towards a more abstract design description than RTL has not yet happened and that a lot of th... » read more

Tech Talk: Power Tools


At 200 million gates, using standard tools for power will add weeks to the semiconductor design process. Vijay Chobisa, product marketing manager at Mentor Graphics, talks with Semiconductor Engineering about where the problems are and how to solve them. [youtube vid=w7yEdtaIb9A] » read more

Power Management Verification Requires Holistic Approach


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss power management [getkc id="10" kc_name="Verification"] issues with Arvind Shanmugavel, senior director, applications engineering at [getentity id="22021" e_name="Ansys-Apache"]; Guillaume Boillet, technical marketing manager at [getentity id="22026" e_name="Atrenta"]; Adam Sherer, verification product management director at [getentity id="22032" e_... » read more

Tech Talk: Faster SPICE


ProPlus CTO Bruce McGaughy explains why FastSPICE (fast Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis) is running out of steam in the finFET generation and what needs to happen next. [youtube vid=07XzUQxPUr8] » read more

Is Art Acceptable In Verification?


The industry appears to have accepted that [getkc id="10" kc_name="verification"] involves art as well as science. This is usually based on one of three reasons, namely: the problem is large and complex; there is a lack of understanding and tools that enable it to be automated; and if it could be made a science, all of the jobs would have migrated offshore. Today, designs are built from pre-... » read more

Is SystemC Broken?


In order to perform architectural exploration, performance analysis and optimization, early validation of software, improved productivity in hardware development and many other tasks, the industry needs a viable [getkc id="104" kc_name="virtual prototype"]. That requires a suitable language in order to express necessary concepts at a high enough level of [getkc id="101" kc_name="abstraction"] s... » read more

Design By Architect Or Committee?


Everything we do is based on a language. It doesn’t matter if we are talking about design, verification, specification, software or mask data. They all provide a way to communicate intent, and then there are engines that work on the intent to produce something else that is desirable, also based on a language. Over time, the EDA industry has built up a hierarchy of languages from the most deta... » read more

DDR4 Board Design And Signal Integrity Verification Challenges


This paper, originally presented at DesignCon and nominated for a best paper award, includes an investigation of DDR4's Pseudo Open Drain driver and what its use means for power consumption and Vref levels for the receivers. This paper also examines a DDR4 system design example and the need for simulating with IBIS power aware models versus transistor level models for Simultaneous Switching ... » read more

Clock Domain Crossing (CDC): Are We There Yet?


Over the last decade, SoC designs have become significantly reliant on IP reuse to manage the design complexity and meet time-to-market goals. IP-based design and verification methodology is essential but has put an additional verification burden on IP suppliers (internal and external). IP suppliers need to ensure that their IP is exhaustively verified and SoC Integrators need to ensure that al... » read more

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