tag: Synopsys

EDA Forecast: More Clouds
By Ed Sperling - 24 Feb, 2011 - Comments: 0

By Ed Sperling Design engineers and EDA vendors used to scoff at the idea of cloud-based tools, but no one is scoffing anymore. A decade after the idea of renting tools online fell flat, largely due to security concerns by chipmakers, all three of the major EDA players and some smaller rivals are taking cloud-based solutions very seriously again. There are several reasons for this change... » read more

Power Management Trumps Battery Technology
By Ed Sperling - 10 Feb, 2011 - Comments: 0

By Ann Steffora Mutschler The lithium-ion battery has the power to ruin someone’s day, especially when it dies and cannot be charged, not to mention occasional thermal runaways that literally cause explosions. For a technology that is about 30 years old, and approaching its limits, it is mind-boggling that the best brains on the planet haven’t come up with a technological superior alternat... » read more

The Missing Pieces In Power Modeling—And Who’s Going To Provide Them
By Ed Sperling - 10 Feb, 2011 - Comments: 0

By Ed Sperling The push to develop power models is growing at each node, and at 22nm it will be virtually impossible to proceed without one or more models for power. Providing these kind of models is easier said than done, however. Creating an accurate power model requires accurate data from all the other pieces on a chip that potentially can affect the power. That includes how third-party ... » read more

The Pain of UPF/CPF
By Ann Mutschler - 10 Feb, 2011 - Comments: 0

Without entering into a debate on the merits of the UPF and CPF, there is a very real and valid concern that designers have today regarding these power intent formats. According to Krishna Balachandran, director of product marketing for low-power verification products at Synopsys, design teams are questioning the validity/correctness of the resulting code. Because they are learning these ... » read more

Hot Potatoes
By Ed Sperling - 28 Jan, 2011 - Comments: 0

Matching hardware to software, and software to hardware, is an interesting discussion. It’s also one that usually happens at a very high-level of abstraction, which renders many of the conclusions less than helpful. The software stack is not a single thing. It’s a group of things, all incredibly complex in their own right and increasingly in need of some very detailed integration. The fa... » read more

Connecting System-Level Flows To Implementation Tools
By Ed Sperling - 27 Jan, 2011 - Comments: 0

By Ann Steffora Mutschler With the complexity explosion occurring in SoC design today, there is a relentless force to push design decisions further up in terms of abstraction. Resolving issues at the gate level is not possible any more because there just isn’t enough time or resources. Further, the resulting design may not even be competitive because optimization at the gate level can leave ... » read more

What’s A Cell Phone?
By Ed Sperling - 27 Jan, 2011 - Comments: 0

By Ed Sperling Just because a smart phone is sold by Verizon or AT&T mobile no longer means that it will be used primarily as a phone. That distinction may sound trivial, but it has deep implications for the components that are used inside of these devices, how they’re used, and who wins the designs. Shifts such as this can also lead to broad changes in who buys the tools to develop t... » read more

Connecting System-Level Flows To Implementation Tools
By Ed Sperling - 27 Jan, 2011 - Comments: 0

By Ann Steffora Mutschler With the complexity explosion occurring in SoC design today, there is a relentless force to push design decisions further up in terms of abstraction. Resolving issues at the gate level is not possible any more because there just isn’t enough time or resources. Further, the resulting design may not even be competitive because optimization at the gate level can leave ... » read more

Power Model Complexity Grows
By Ed Sperling - 13 Jan, 2011 - Comments: 0

By Ed Sperling The number of factors required for an effective power model has far surpassed the capabilities of even the most detailed spreadsheet at 45nm and beyond. It has now entered the realm of complex databases and architectural tradeoffs, and those tradeoffs will become even more complex as 3D stacking takes root over the next 24 months. The idea of modeling power is hardly new, but... » read more

Material Effects: Trading Performance For Power
By Ed Sperling - 13 Jan, 2011 - Comments: 0

By Ann Steffora Mutschler Power impacts everything, even when it comes to semiconductor manufacturing materials. While bulk CMOS technology still reigns supreme, there are a number of advanced materials being suggested as replacements when it runs out of steam at around 15nm, including silicon on insulator (SOI)—particularly in combination with FinFET multigate structures on SOI—silicon ge... » read more

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