The Limits Of AI-Generated Models


In several recent stories, the subject of models has come up, and one recurrent theme is that AI may be able to help us generate models of a required abstraction. While this may be true in some cases, it is very dangerous in others. If we generalize, AI should be good for any model where the results are predominantly continuous, but discontinuities create problems. Unless those are found and... » read more

Anatomy Of A System Simulation


The semiconductor industry has greatly simplified analysis by consolidating around a small number of models and abstractions, but that capability is breaking down both at the implementation level and at the system level. Today, the biggest pressure is coming from the systems industry, where the electronic content is a small fraction of what must be integrated together. Systems companies tend... » read more

Why Using Commercial Chiplets Is So Difficult


Experts at the Table: Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss use cases and challenges for commercial chiplets with Saif Alam, vice president of engineering at Movellus; Tony Mastroianni, advanced packaging solutions director at Siemens Digital Industries Software; Mark Kuemerle, vice president of technology at Marvell; and Craig Bishop, CTO at Deca Technologies. What follows are excerpts... » read more

Verifying A RISC-V Processor


Verifying an SoC is very different than verifying a processor due to the huge state space in the processor. In addition to the tools needed for an SoC, additional tools are required for a step and compare environment. Larry Lapides, vice president at Imperas, talks about the need to verify asynchronous events like interrupts, how to compare a reference model to RTL, and the need for both hardwa... » read more

Simplifying Power Module Verification Using Compliance Checking


By Wilfried Wessel, Siemens EDA; Simon Liebetegger, University of Applied Sciences, Darmstadt; and Florian Bauer, Siemens EDA Current simulation and verification methods for power modules are time-consuming. Each domain has specific solutions based on finite elements analysis, computational fluid dynamics and solvers for electric circuits like SPICE. This article investigates if it is possib... » read more

Everyone’s A System Designer With Heterogeneous Integration


The move away from monolithic SoCs to heterogeneous chips and chiplets in a package is accelerating, setting in motion a broad shift in methodologies, collaborations, and design goals that are felt by engineers at every step of the flow, from design through manufacturing. Nearly every engineer is now working or touching some technology, process, or methodology that is new. And they are inter... » read more

Industry Pressure Grows For Simulating Systems Of Systems


Most complex systems are designed in a top-down manner, but as the amount of electronic content in those systems increases, so does the pressure on the chip industry to provide high-level models and simulation capabilities. Those models either do not exist today, or they exist in isolation. No matter how capable a model or simulator, there never will be one that can do it all. In some cases,... » read more

What Happened To Portable Stimulus?


In June 2018, Accellera released the initial version of the Portable Test and Stimulus Standard (PSS), a new verification language that was slated to be the first new abstraction defined within EDA for a couple of decades. So what happened to it? Apart from a few updates at DVCon, there appears to be little talk about it today. However, the industry has its head down trying to make it work, ... » read more

What Does Shift Left With Calibre Mean For IC Designers


Driven by the world’s seemingly insatiable demand for electronics that constantly do more faster, integrated circuit (IC) design companies are continuously seeking ways to profitably deliver products with more functionality, reliability, and performance while reducing time-to-market. To accomplish this, a well-planned shift left strategy can free up critical time and resources in delivery sch... » read more

Formally Verifying Data-Oblivious Behavior In HW Using Standard Property Checking Techniques


A technical paper titled “A Scalable Formal Verification Methodology for Data-Oblivious Hardware” was published by researchers at RPTU Kaiserslautern-Landau and Stanford University. Abstract: "The importance of preventing microarchitectural timing side channels in security-critical applications has surged in recent years. Constant-time programming has emerged as a best-practice technique... » read more

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