HW Vs. SW: Who’s Leading Whom?


In the past, technologies were developed in the software world that have languished until they were taken up by the hardware community. Then they were refined and polished and became fully integrated into the hardware development and verification flow. Examples are lint and formal. That was followed by attempts to migrate methodologies, such as object-oriented programming, which is the basis fo... » read more

Hybrid Emulation Gets More Hybrid


Rising chip complexity is creating a booming emulation business, as chipmakers working at advanced nodes turn to bigger iron to get chips out the door on time. What started as a "shift lift"—doing more things earlier in the design cycle—is evolving into a more complex mix of hardware-accelerated verification for both hardware and software. There are even some new forays into power explor... » read more

Technology Reboot Required


The International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS) has produced reports outlining the major obstacles the electronics industry faces for a long time now. It attempts to project, with a 15-year horizon, the problems that need to be solved in order to take advantage of the complete design and manufacturing ecosystem. From this, early research efforts can be started. This enabled the E... » read more

You Can’t Walk Straight Blindfolded


Let’s examine the first part of the title of this blog. It is stated as a given. But is it true that you really can’t walk straight when blindfolded? That is what my children and I set out to investigate one sunny afternoon in October (yes we live in California). We looked for a nice open field with little to no surrounding sound, so that you cannot use the sound to set your bearing. We ... » read more

Improving Emulation Throughput For Multi-Project SoC Designs


As design sizes grow, so, too, does the verification effort. Indeed, verification has become the biggest challenge in SoC development, representing a majority share of the development cost, both for hardware itself and for verification at the hardware/software interface. And today, it’s not uncommon for companies to have distributed teams working on multiple SoC designs in parallel. In some c... » read more

Gaps In Performance, Power Coverage


The semiconductor industry always has used metrics to define progress, and in areas such as functional verification significant advances have been made. But so far, no effective metrics have been developed for power, performance, or other system-level concerns, which basically means that design teams have to run blind. On the plus side, the industry has migrated from the use of code coverage... » read more

Power, Standards And The IoT


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss power, standards and the IoT with Jerry Frenkil, director of open standards at [getentity id="22055" comment="Si2"]; Frank Schirrmeister, group director of product marketing of the System Development Suite at [getentity id="22032" e_name="Cadence"]; Randy Smith, vice president of marketing at [getentity id="22605" e_name="Sonics"]; and Vojin Zivojno... » read more

Abstraction: Necessary But Evil


Abstraction allows aspects of a design to be described in an executable form much earlier in the flow. But some abstractions are breaking down, and an increasing amount of lower-level information has to be brought upstream in order to provide estimates that are close enough to reality so informed decisions can be made. The value of abstractions in design cannot be overstated. High levels of ... » read more

Tech Talk: Configurable Logic


Cliff Lloyd, business development director at NXP Semiconductors, talks about designing in one part for many functions to reduce power consumption and cost. [youtube vid=ut5kCm0kNwE] » read more

Power Estimation: Early Warning System Or False Alarm?


Semiconductor Engineering sat down with a large panel of experts to discuss the state of power estimation and to find out if the current levels of accuracy are sufficient to being able to make informed decisions. Panelists included: Leah Schuth, director of technical marketing in the physical design group at [getentity id="22186" comment="ARM"]; Vic Kularni, senior vice president and general ma... » read more

← Older posts Newer posts →