Hybrid Emulation Gets More Hybrid


Rising chip complexity is creating a booming emulation business, as chipmakers working at advanced nodes turn to bigger iron to get chips out the door on time. What started as a "shift lift"—doing more things earlier in the design cycle—is evolving into a more complex mix of hardware-accelerated verification for both hardware and software. There are even some new forays into power explor... » read more

Requirements For Datacenter-Ready Emulation


It’s time to look at what the latest trends in emulation are and to review some of the key requirements to make it datacenter-ready. Specifically, I will look at virtualization of external interfaces as well as emulation throughput, specifically the allocation of jobs into emulators. One overarching trend in verification lies in the connection of the engines in what Jim Hogan has dubbed t... » read more

Improving Emulation Throughput For Multi-Project SoC Designs


As design sizes grow, so, too, does the verification effort. Indeed, verification has become the biggest challenge in SoC development, representing a majority share of the development cost, both for hardware itself and for verification at the hardware/software interface. And today, it’s not uncommon for companies to have distributed teams working on multiple SoC designs in parallel. In some c... » read more

All-in-C Behavioral Synthesis And Verification


This paper presents the benefits of C language-based behavioral synthesis design methodology over traditional RTL-based methods for System LSI, or SoC designs. A comprehensive C-based tool flow, based on CyberWorkBench®, developed during the last twenty years at NEC’s R&D laboratories is introduced. This includes behavioral synthesis and formal verification and hardware-software co-simulatio... » read more

Will The Chip Work?


As the number of possible issues mount for integrating IP into complex chips, so does the focus on solving these issues. What becomes quickly apparent to anyone integrating multiple IP blocks is that one size doesn't fit all, either from an IP or a tools standpoint. There is no single solution because there is no single way of putting IP together. Each architecture is unique, and each brings... » read more

ARM Buys Carbon


ARM acquired Carbon Design Systems and its staff for an undisclosed amount of money, adding virtual prototyping capabilities for ARM cores. The deal is the latest in an onslaught of mergers and acquisitions that have racked the semiconductor industry over the past 18 months, propelled by low interest rates and relatively low valuations of target companies. For ARM, this deal solves a growing... » read more

Will The Chip Work?


IP is getting better, but the challenges of integrating it are getting worse. As the number of IP blocks in SoCs increases at each new process node, so does the difficulty of making them all work together. In some cases, this can mean extra code and a slight performance hit on power and performance. In other cases, it may require more drastic measures, ranging from a re-spin to a new archite... » read more

Gaps In Performance, Power Coverage


The semiconductor industry always has used metrics to define progress, and in areas such as functional verification significant advances have been made. But so far, no effective metrics have been developed for power, performance, or other system-level concerns, which basically means that design teams have to run blind. On the plus side, the industry has migrated from the use of code coverage... » read more

Raising The IQ Of Your MEMS-Based IC Design Flow


By Nicolas Williams and Qi Jing Internet of Things (IoT) applications depend on smart objects that interact with the real world. So your IoT project is likely to contain ICs that integrate micro electro-mechanical systems (MEMS), such as accelerometers, pressure sensors, motors, and microphones that acquire data for analysis. These projects are finding their way into automobiles, phones, and... » read more

The Challenge Of Updating Cars


News stories about automotive hacking are becoming more common, and so is the concern about how to curb this problem. Security has become a new layer of system design complexity, and it's being taken increasingly seriously in a market that until very recently largely ignored it. That attitude is changing rapidly though, particularly with the advent of autonomous and connected vehicles. Secu... » read more

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