IC Journal - March 30, 2010

Wednesday, March 31, 2010


a techfocus media publication :: March 30, 2010

From the Editor

bryonmoyer7393.jpgTechnology programs come and go. Some are successful, some aren't. But the success of some businesses can be determined as much by business model or marketing programs as much as technology. And again, some are successful; some aren't. This week we take a look at one program, notable both for the tenacity of its champion and the staying power of its main protagonist. As yet, it wouldn't be considered notable for its success. Read ahead and see...

In January it was Cliff. In February it was Ian. Now, there are just a few days left for YOU to be our March winner of a $500 Amazon.com gift certificate for the best posts on Journal Forums.

Thanks as always for reading. We encourage you to share your thoughts in the new easier-to-use comments area right below the articles; don't be shy. Or you can get a lively discussion going on our new FORUMS.

Bryon Moyer - Editor, IC Journal

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EVENTS & ANNOUNCEMENTS


Webinar: Complementing Emulation with Rapid Prototyping
In this on-demand webcast Synopsys discusses how FPGA-based rapid prototyping is used as a natural complement to emulation when shortening development time is critical to ASIC and SoC projects. Together, these systems offer designers and verification engineers a highly powerful and productive solution for hardware debug, system integration, system validation and pre-silicon software development to reduce the risk of design re-spins, minimize schedule risk and meet demanding time-to-market needs.
Click here to watch

IC Journal Forum Competition
Win 500 bucks just for being smart!
LEMME AT THEM FORUMS!

(Click here for competition details)

On Demand

Billion Gate Emulation with ZeBu-Server (CHALK TALK)
Running out of verification capacity? Today's huge designs demand a new solution with dramatically improved speed, capacity, and flexibility. Join Amelia Dalton as she talks with Ron Choi of Eve about the challenges of Billion-Gate emulation. (EvE)

Solving Today's Tough FPGA Design Problems (CHALK TALK)
Are your FPGAs outgrowing your tool flow? Join Amelia Dalton as she talks with Jeff Garrison of Synopsys about setting up your design tools for today's more demanding FPGAs. (Synopsys)

Introducing Synphony High Level Synthesis (CHALK TALK)
Having difficulty getting complex algorithms into hardware? Join Amelia Dalton as she chats with Chris Eddington from Synopsys about the latest advances in high-level synthesis - going directly from Matlab into optimized hardware design. (Synopsys)

Power Management in an Embedded Multiprocessor Cluster (WHITE PAPER)
Coherent microprocessor clusters, having localized instruction and data caches per CPU, require special techniques to maintain consistency between localized cache contents and their common address region. For embedded systems, designers typically apply snoop-based schemes to maintain memory coherence. This scheme introduces ownership attributes of local cache lines, which are posted throughout the cluster upon intent to use or change. (MIPS)

ZeBu™: A Unified Verification Approach for Hardware Designers and Embedded Software Developers (WHITE PAPER)
Moore's law continues to drive both chip complexity and performance to new highs every year, and continues to stress and periodically "break" existing design flows. Fortunately for EDA users, the same shrinking geometries that make their design problems tougher are also helping to improve the performance for their EDA tools. (EvE)

FPGA - PCB Co-Design Done The Right Way (CHALK TALK)
Join Amelia Dalton as she talks with Hemant Shah of Cadence Design Systems about new ways to manage the complex issues that arise when trying to optimize pin assignments for both FPGAs and PCBs. (Cadence)

Improving Software Development Productivity With Virtual Platforms (CHALK TALK)
Are your SoC and embedded design projects increasingly dominated by software development schedules? Join Amelia Dalton as she talks with Frank Schirrmeister of Synopsys about ways to improve software development productivity using virtual platforms. (Synopsys)

Generating Functionally Equivalent FPGAs and ASICs With a Single Set of RTL and Synthesis/Timing Constraints (WHITE PAPER)
Electronic systems designers use FPGAs for their prototype implementations, taking advantage of the devices' reprogrammability to validate hardware and software. Once the design is ready for volume production, designers are finding that certain types of ASICs—specifically, ASICs with a silicon platform and toolset that enable concurrent design with the FPGA, using identical I/Os, memory resources, and IP—help them meet power, performance, and cost targets. (Altera)

Confirma™: The Next Era Of Prototyping (CHALK TALK)
Struggling with FPGA prototyping boards? Join Amelia Dalton as she talks with Juergen Jaeger of Synopsys about the Next Era of Rapid Prototyping. (Synopsys)

Catapult C Synthesis Designing a JPEG Compression Engine (CHALK TALK)
Amelia Dalton finds out that designing hardware with high-level languages can be both easy and fun as she and Stuart Clubb of Mentor Graphics walk you through the design of a hardware JPEG encoder using C++. (Mentor Graphics)

Crossing the Gap between Algorithm and Hardware Implementation (CHALK TALK)
In this webcast Amelia Dalton will chat with Stuart Clubb of Mentor Graphics about how C++ and Catapult C Synthesis can accelerate the design, implementation, and verification of complex system-level algorithms. In this webcast, you will learn about modeling techniques for representing bit-accurate arithmetic in C++ using Mentor Graphics' "Algorithmic C" data types. (Mentor Graphics)

Current Feature Articles

One Person Making a Difference

by Bryon Moyer

It's hard to get attention if you're somewhere people aren't looking. And, of course, in the world of technology, the focus is usually on the technology. That's where the innovation tends to be, and, not least important, that's what's patentable. At least if it's hardware, anyway (jury's still somewhat out on software, although apparently it's full steam ahead if you're patenting a living entity… If only Mary Shelley had known…).

Even though technology may be sexy, it doesn't guarantee success by itself. Innumerable brilliant, interesting technologies have come and gone, leaving few to remember, and fewer yet to pine, their brief existences. And we all know of superior technologies that succumbed to inferior technologies for reasons having nothing to do with technological merit. In fact, we probably use some on a daily basis, although we may not speak the names out loud for fear that the vanquishers may come and break our kneecaps. Or our computers. Read More

20100323_cadence Accelerating Exploration
Cadence Adds Auto Floorplan Synthesis to Encounter
by Bryon Moyer
20100316_cloud A Cloud-On-A-Chip
The Kind of Fun Stuff Intel Gets To Do In The Labs
by Bryon Moyer
20100309_tolltakers EDA Taking Its Toll
by Bryon Moyer
20100309_ciscopt2 Attacking Constraint Complexity
Part 2 – E Soft and SystemVerilog Default Constraints
by Benjamin Chen, Krishnamoorthy, Srinath Atluri, Nimalan Siva, Alexander Wakefield, and Balamurugan Veluchamy
20100302_multicore Yet Another Parallel Approach
PrimeTime Gets Multi-threading
by Bryon Moyer


Latest News

March 30, 2010

Sondrel Adopts Azuro Clock Tree Synthesis Solution to Deliver Lowest Power

Tanner EDA Adds Kelleher Systems as Distributor for Full-flow Analog IC Design Tool Suite

D-Tools Enhances Manufacturer Vantage Point (MVP) Program with Legacy Partner, AudioControl

SMIC Bases DFM Sign-off Strategy on Mentor Graphics Calibre Platform

Cypress Introduces PSoC 3® and PSoC 5 Device Selection Tool To Help Designers Easily Customize the Perfect PSoC Solution

Synopsys Galaxy Implementation Platform enables first-pass silicon success on Infineon's 40-nanometer X-GOLD 626 wireless product

March 29, 2010

EnSilica launches major new version of its eSi-RISC Development Suite

Design Compiler 2010 doubles productivity of synthesis and place and route

March 25, 2010

Kilopass First to Offer Logic Non-Volatile Memory (NVM) in TSMC™ 40nm and 45nm Low-Power (LP) Processes

March 24, 2010

EMA CircuitSpace 4.0 Allows Flexible Replication and Design Reuse

Tanner EDA and Dongbu HiTek Semiconductor Jointly Develop Foundry-certified Process Design Kits (PDKs) for Critical Process Nodes

March 23, 2010

ASTER announces the first DfT software to combine Electrical and Mechanical analysis

Sidense Participating in IPextreme's Constellations Semiconductor IP Conference

Mentor Graphics Calibre LFD Certifications at TSMC Now Include 28nm Process Node with TSMC UDFM Engine

New in the Forums

I shure hope so

I really hope that one day massive analog arrays are feasible. We do not use high frequencies (20-150kHz), so we are the low-frequency category. Having an analog computation engine would be great, as it is inherent real-time. But the amount of filtering w...
Posted on 03/25/10 at 3:25 AM
by: jast

What would you do with 48 cores?

Implementing massive parallel algorithms would be the obvious answer. But that is exactly what I would be doing. Working in Sonar research, we often need a massive amount of bandpass filters (no, an STFFT just won't do it), and more operations on the band...
Posted on 03/25/10 at 3:20 AM
by: jast

How much do you really explore?

This week we took a look an approach Cadence is providing to allow more floorplan exploration. But floorplanning is just a part of a complex design process that involves lots of tradeoff...
Posted on 03/23/10 at 6:37 PM
by: bmoyer


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