Tear Down The Wall Between Front-End And Back-End Teams


As complexity of system-on-chip devices increases, it's becoming imperative for design teams and organizations to re-examine how they work with one another in order to improve productivity. One giant step in this direction is to bridge the divide between the front-end design process and the physical back-end design process. We often refer to this as a figurative “wall,” but there is real... » read more

Constraints Ubiquity: Impact On Managing Design Closure?


By Mark Baker and Ravindra Aneja Maintaining completeness, correctness and consistency of design constraints is a challenge that is pervasive in the design flow. Multiple transformations, or touch points (as illustrated in the diagram below), exist during the design implementation stages. Additionally, there are parallel stages involving IP development and handoff resulting in SoC integration ... » read more

Timing Bomb


By Ed Sperling Timing closure, a basic operation in chip design and development, is becoming anything but basic at advanced process nodes. Systematic variability that was at least predictable at 90nm has become random at 45nm. Tools that worked fine with two corner cases now have to deal with hundreds. And as more functions make their way onto a single die, often with multiple modes of oper... » read more

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