Tackling Functional Correctness, Safety, Trust And Security


We’re six months into the pandemic, and it looks like in-person conferences are becoming a distant memory and that virtual conferences are now becoming routine. It used to be that traveling to a conference (sometimes long distances) was the only way to be able to attend technical presentations and learn about the latest technologies and methodologies, and that was only if you received permiss... » read more

Innovative Strategies Are Improving Early Design Circuit Verification


Layout vs. schematic (LVS) circuit verification is an essential stage in the integrated circuit (IC) design verification cycle. However, given today’s large design sizes, numerous hierarchies, and complex foundry decks, meeting planned tapeout deadlines in the quickest turnaround time (TAT) can be difficult. In an effort to minimize TAT, most design teams now use parallelized design flows, wh... » read more

New Uses For Assertions


Assertions have been a staple in formal verification for years. Now they are being examined to see what else they can be used for, and the list is growing. Traditionally, design and verification engineers have used assertions in specific ways. First, there are assertions for formal verification, which are used by designers to show when something is wrong. Those assertions help to pinpoint wh... » read more

Importance Of A Functional Verification Methodology


A good functional verification methodology is extremely crucial to the success of any semiconductor design project. Missed or late bugs can massively hurt market share, revenue, and brand name even for reputed companies. The complexity of SoC designs along with tight time-to-market constraints demand high levels of efficiency in the verification process. The approach to verify the functional... » read more

Productivity Keeping Pace With Complexity


Designs have become larger and more complex and yet design time has shortened, but team sizes remain essentially flat. Does this show that productivity is keeping pace with complexity for everyone? The answer appears to be yes, at least for now, for a multitude of reasons. More design and IP reuse is using more and larger IP blocks and subsystems. In addition, the tools are improving, and mo... » read more

Increase LVS Verification Productivity In Early Design Cycles


With the innovative Calibre nmLVS-Recon early verification tool, designers can run targeted short isolation analysis and debugging on blocks, macros and chips in early design phases. The Calibre nmLVS-Recon short isolation use model focuses on fast, efficient, prioritized short isolation and short paths debugging. To read more, click here. » read more

Formal Solutions For SystemC/C++ Verification


OneSpin Solutions provides its popular 360 DV formal verification product line, which allows for both the automated checking and full assertion-based verification of SystemC/C++ design representations. This solution extends the verification capability that may be applied to abstract designs, coded in SystemC/C++ for many different use models. This white paper describes the OneSpin solution a... » read more

RISC-V: What’s Missing And Who’s Competing


Part 2: Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss the business and technology landscape for RISC-V with Zdenek Prikryl, CTO of Codasip; Helena Handschuh, a Rambus Security Technologies fellow; Louie De Luna, director of marketing at Aldec; Shubhodeep Roy Choudhury, CEO of Valtrix Systems; and Bipul Talukdar, North America director of applications engineering at SmartDV. What follows are exc... » read more

Is DVFS Worth The Effort?


Almost all designs have become power-aware and are being forced to consider every power saving technique, but not all of them are yielding the expected results. Moreover, they can add significant complexity into designs, increasing the time it takes to get to tapeout and boosting up the cost. Dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS) is one such power and energy saving technique now being... » read more

Components For Open-Source Verification


Defining an open-source verification methodology is a lot more difficult than just developing an open-source simulator. This is the reality facing open-source hardware such as RISC-V. Some people may be asking for the corresponding open-source verification, but that is a much tougher problem — and it is not going to be solved in the short term. Part one examined the reasons why open-source... » read more

← Older posts Newer posts →