The Assertion Conundrum


It is well documented and widely agreed that assertions can provide a tremendous benefit to design and verification teams by reducing and even eliminating debug – but their use is still not ubiquitous. Part of the reason is that assertions cannot be picked up casually, noted David Larson, director of verification at [getentity id="22150" e_name="Synapse Design"]. “This is because asserti... » read more

New Uses For Emulation


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss the changing emulation landscape with Jim Kenney, director of marketing for emulation at Mentor Graphics; Tom Borgstrom, director of the verification group at Synopsys; Frank Schirrmeister, group director of product marketing for the System Development Suite at Cadence; Gary Smith, chief analyst at Gary Smith EDA; and Lauro Rizzatti, a verification ... » read more

When And Where To Use Virtual Prototypes


Just because something is technically possible doesn’t always mean it should be done. This definitely holds true currently when it comes to virtual prototypes, which have gotten a lot of attention for their potential in the SoC design process—especially for concurrent software development. While no one is pointing fingers, there are situations in which design teams have thrown themselves... » read more

Big Memory Shift Ahead


System architecture has been driven by the performance of [getkc id="22" kc_name="memory"]. Processor designers would have liked all of the memory be fast [getkc id="92" kc_name="SRAM"], placed on-chip for maximum performance, but that was not an option. Memory had to be fabricated as separate chips and connected via a Printed Circuit Board (PCB). That limited the number of available I/O ports ... » read more

Getting To A Connected World, Step-by-Step


I recently bought myself an activity tracker. The watch-like device keeps track of how many steps I take and how high I climb, such as the number of vertical feet I “conquer” by taking the stairs. From that, it calculates the distance I travel and the amount of calories that I burn in a day. The device also can measure my heart rate and the oxygen level in my blood, but given the high heart... » read more

Using Virtual Prototypes To Address The Growing Software Complexity In Automotive


The software content is growing steadily across multiple applications and the automotive market is no exception to this. In fact the amount of electronics and software in cars is transforming the way we perceive the value of a car. With this steady increase in software also comes the need to handle the amount and the complexity of all these different software stacks. And unlike other applicatio... » read more

Blog Review: May 21


Mentor’s Colin Walls offers up some new insights into C++ exception handling, thanks to some input from colleague Jonathan Roelofs. This one involves minimizing overhead and reducing runtime penalties. Synopsys’ Mick Posner is back in the saddle again—literally. This is about as green as it gets. Cadence’s Arthur Marris reports back on the IEEE 802.3 Ethernet standards meeting, in... » read more

The Week In Review: Design


M&A Synopsys’ Coverity subsidiary bought Kalistick, a French company that makes cloud-based solutions to boost testing efficiency by allowing engineers to identify and prioritize tests. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Tools Cadence rolled out verification IP for the new PCI Express 4.0 architecture. The new spec supports up to 16 billion transactions per second, which is double... » read more

Test Challenges Grow


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss current and future test challenges with Dave Armstrong, director of business development at Advantest; Steve Pateras, product marketing director for Silicon Test Solutions at Mentor Graphics; Robert Ruiz, senior product marketing manager at Synopsys; Mike Slessor, president of FormFactor; and Dan Glotter, chief executive of Optimal+. SE: What are... » read more

Blog Review: May 14


Ansys’ Bill Vandermark highlights the top five engineering articles of the week. Of particular note is element No. 117, a new entry in the periodic table. The temporary name is ununseptium, which means…well, surprise…117. Cadence’s Brian Fuller follows a panel discussion about the biggest potential roadblock for the IoT’s success—privacy and security. You’ve been warned. Syn... » read more

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