Posts Tagged ‘Intellectual property’
Monday, March 17th, 2014
 RTL Signoff is certainly one of the hot topics in chip design circles lately, and one that is garnering great interest and concern. I chatted recently with Piyush Sancheti, VP of Marketing at Atrenta, on what it is, why it’s a design imperative, and how it should be done.
Liz: Piyush, thanks for taking the time out to chat with me today on this vital topic…RTL Signoff.
Piyush: No problem, Liz
Liz: So, to start out, what is RTL Signoff?
Piyush: “RTL Signoff” gained momentum as an established concept in 2013. While the concept is not new, a commonly-accepted definition did not exist in the past, which is now beginning to emerge. Here’s what I think RTL Signoff is: a comprehensive series of well-defined MUST-pass requirements for your RTL before you commit the design to downstream implementation such as synthesis and physical layout. In addition to this complete set of RTL Signoff requirements, you need tools and methodologies to meet the requirement, along with tangible metrics to measure your pass/fail criteria.
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Tags: Atrenta, Chip Design, EDA, EDA & IP, Electronic Design Automation, https://www.facebook.com/pages/Lee-Public-Relations/201964499825219?ref=hl, Intellectual property, IP, Piyush Sancheti, register transfer level, RTL, RTL signoff, Semiconductor IP, semiconductors, SoC, System on Chip, www.leepr.com
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Sunday, March 16th, 2014
 Brian Fuller - editor in chief of the now-lamented EE Times during its best years - and I were talking about it being great that there are these predictions about where EDA/IP is going in 2014. Chris Rowen’s wrap up prediction talked about EDA’s need to move beyond component – level focus. Chris isn’t alone in this idea.
The question is: HOW will EDA/IP get beyond the component level and start looking at what’s beyond the 25-year EDA horizon and how EDA can and must add value.
Brian and I would love to hear what readers out there think…..
Does EDA & IP need to go beyond?
Where does it need to go?
And how will it get there?
Tags: Brian Fuller, Cadence, Chip Design, Chris Rowen, EDA, EDA & IP, EE Times, Electronic Design Automation, https://www.facebook.com/pages/Lee-Public-Relations/201964499825219?ref=hl, Intellectual property, IP, Lee PR, Semiconductor IP, semiconductors, SoC, System on Chip, www.leepr.com
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Monday, February 24th, 2014
Next up in our series of predictions Warren Savage, President and CEO of IPextreme, shares with us what he sees in his crystal ball for 2014.
“As the door closes on a successful 2013 for most companies in the semiconductor industry, the outlook for 2014 is bright as we see an explosion of new devices in the so-called “Internet of Things” era. Google’s recent $3.2B acquisition of Nest is indicative that this market will soon eclipse the smart phone/tablet era (aka the post-PC era). The IoT era will bring with it a range of new opportunities for semiconductor companies to exploit that are not mega-devices, but small, specialized technologies that enable opportunities in adjacent markets, like software and data analysis. There may be at least one semiconductor company that exploits this secondary and/or tertiary source of revenue. (more…)
Tags: Chip Design, Intellectual property, Internet of Things, IoT, IP, IPextreme, Semiconductor IP, semiconductors, SoC, System on Chip, Warren Savage, www.leepr.com
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Wednesday, February 19th, 2014
 Bob Smith, Senior VP Marketing & Business Development at Uniquify, shared with us his predictions for semiconductor IP in 2014.
“If 2014 has a watchword for the Semiconductor Industry, it would be momentum and that would be a result of the rapidly increasing use of IP in SoC designs. Add on the mushrooming need for ‘adaptive’ IP to mitigate timing and variation challenges in complex SoCs as performance issues multiply and process geometries shrink.
Moves within the DDR memory space continue to rock the industry and create momentum. Designers are heading directly to the latest JEDEC standard LPDDR4 (low-power DDR4) and moving beyond (or even skipping) LPDDR3 because they’re getting greater gains in performance and low power, an important consideration for mobile applications.
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Tags: Bob Smith, Chip Design, DDR, EDA, Electronic Design Automation, Intellectual property, IP, Lee PR, Lee Public Relations, Semiconductor IP, semiconductors, SoC, System on Chip, Uniquify, www.leepr.com
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Monday, February 17th, 2014
Next up in our series of predictions is the astute insight of Mike Demler, Senior Analyst with The Linley Group & MICROPROCESSOR report, and former EDA & Chip Design news analyst.
“It’s all about the ecosystem triad: EDA + foundry + IP. Cadence and Synopsys continue to evolve more in the IP direction, and there is really not much to say about the tools that hasn’t been said for a long time —just make it all work together! Redundant “standards” and artificial barriers to interoperability cost the semiconductor industry by lowering productivity. This is the problem with the disaggregated model. Back in the days when “real men” had fabs, companies could develop complete design flows without such obstacles.
The triad needs to work together to get over the stall inMoore’s Law at 28nm. Foundries are incurring delays in getting to 16/14nm FinFETS, and almost nobody is going to use 20nm. The chip industry needs an overall lower-cost solution in order to make sub-28nm processes economically viable. Forget 3D ICs, those will be niche products for a long time, about as popular as 3D TV.
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Tags: 3D ICs, Cadence, Chip Design, EDA, EDA & IP, Electronic Design Automation, FinFETs, foundries, foundry, Intellectual property, Lee Public Relations, Mike Demler, Moore's Law, Semiconductor IP, semiconductors, SoC, Synopsys, System on Chip, The Linley Group, wearables, www.leepr.com
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Wednesday, February 12th, 2014
Bryon Moyer, Technology Editor at EE Journal, weighs in on what the chip industry needs from EDA and IP in 2014.
“At the low level, this is going to be the year where the push and pull between EDA companies and users determines how easy FinFETs are to design with.
At the high level, it feels to me like IP and EDA need to come closer together. For years, logic design has been done using text because higher-level languages allow better design abstraction and productivity for hand-crafted designs than prior schematic approaches did. When IP entered the scene, designs were mostly hand-done, with occasional bits farmed out to IP. But now IP dominates, whether internal or third-party. Rather than having a custom-logic paradigm that accommodates IP, it feels like we need to move more to an IP paradigm that accommodates custom logic. And it’s not just about logic either: mixed signal is everywhere, and should be included more seamlessly.”
Tags: Bryon Moyer, Chip Design, EDA, EDA & IP, EE Journal, Electronic Design Automation, FinFETs, Intellectual property, IP, Lee PR, Lee Public Relations, Semiconductor IP, semiconductors, SoC, System on Chip, www.leepr.com
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Thursday, February 6th, 2014
 Anindya Saha, Associate VP (VLSI) at Saankhya Labs, shares his insights on what EDA and IP vendors need to do for their users in 2014.
“Today the EDA and IP companies alike are in the race to cater to the big semiconductor players by offering the greatest IP in the latest process geometries. However, semiconductor startups, – such as Saankhya – do not change process nodes very quickly because it may not necessarily make business sense. Here is why.
‘Process design margins’ is a fact of life, which we need to add when we use the latest process nodes. Incorporating these design margins simply adds to the overall SoC design cycle time which we want to keep to a minimum. Hence staying with the older process nodes may be a more prudent choice. When we look at the IP domain, we can categorize the available IPs into the following buckets – Analog IPs, Standard Cell and Memory IPs, Processor Soft Cores and Connectivity IPs. Besides the usual PPA (Power, Performance and Area) metrics, what we look at for each of these categories is the metric of Power Efficiency. This metric can be based on mW/Mhz or in some cases mW/sq. mm depending on the kind of tradeoffs which we intend to do at System level.
The following are some of the issues I feel EDA and IP companies should address, especially in the domain of standard cell and memory IPs which are commonly used in almost all ASIC Designs today. (more…)
Tags: Chip Design, EDA, EDA & IP, Electronic Design Automation, Intellectual property, IP, Lee PR, Lee Public Relations, Saankhya Labs, Semiconductor IP, semiconductors, SoC, System on Chip, www.leepr.com
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Monday, February 3rd, 2014
 Robert Beanland, Senior Director, Corporate Marketing at Atrenta, weighed in on what EDA and IP vendors need to do in 2014.
“Ahhh, the age old question of, ‘What does EDA and IP need to do this year?’ Well, …
The IP folks need a way to provide fully validated IP to their customers with not only a good understanding of all the validation that has been done, but also the expected use model and configurations for the IP. The use model is critical because it is quite common for IP to be ‘abused’ in a way or mode that the IP vendor never expected. When this happens, the customer must be able to assess the problem in-situ and work with the IP vendor to find a resolution. A standardized quality metric is much more desirable than the current option of comparing each vendor’s unique assessment of their validation. This validation and analysis should include, but is not limited to, power, clock domains, testability and physical. The ‘clean’ IP can then be used with more confidence by their customers in their SoC integration.
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Tags: Atrenta, Chip Design, EDA, EDA & IP, Electronic Design Automation, https://www.facebook.com/pages/Lee-Public-Relations/201964499825219?ref=hl, Intellectual property, IP, Lee PR, Lee Public Relations, RTL, Semiconductor IP, SoC, System on Chip, www.leepr.com
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Wednesday, January 29th, 2014
 Next up in our series is Simon Bloch’s forecast for 2014. Simon is Sr. Director of Samsung Electronics R&D, in mobile consumer wireless devices.
“The future of electronics is looking bright! Market forecasters predict growth in literally every category of electronic markets ranging from smart mobile and wearable devices, appliances and sensors connected to a network of Internet of Everything to smart connected cars and cities.
In today’s electronics products, sophisticated hardware is becoming insufficient for product success. Many layers of stacked software control the underlying hardware and determine a product’s competitiveness via functionality, performance, power and cost. And while there is always going to be a need to create new semiconductor components and IC companies will need EDA tools, EDA vendors need to expand the view of Electronics and treat software stack as an integrated part of EDA.
There are many opportunities to come up with products in the software stack space around Linux/Android operating systems and in the area of hardware virtualization. Just last month, CyanogenMod, a company that provides Android based software widely used in the mobile industry, secured $23 million in funding from top tier VCs. CyanogenMod is a software stack product and contains many features not found in Google versions of the operating system.
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Tags: Chip Design, CyanogenMod, EDA, Electronic Design Automation, https://www.facebook.com/pages/Lee-Public-Relations/201964499825219?ref=hl, Intellectual property, Internet of Things, IoT, IP, Lee PR, Lee Public Relations, Samsung, SDA, Semiconductor IP, semiconductors, SoC, Software Design Automation, System on Chip, www.leepr.com
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Monday, January 27th, 2014
 We asked Mike Gianfagna, VP of Marketing at eSilicon and former VP of Corporate Marketing at Atrenta, about EDA, IP and the chip industry in 2014.
Ed: What does EDA and IP need to do in 2014?
Mike: Work more effectively with each other. IP integration continues to be a huge bottleneck for SoC design. A more uniform quality metric and a way to enforce it is desperately needed. This problem can’t be solved in isolation. EDA and IP companies need to collaborate to tame this issue. They can do it.
Ed: What does the chip industry want from EDA and IP in 2014?
Mike: The same thing really. Every SoC project is dependent on somebody’s IP. Whether it’s internally supplied or provided by your favorite IP supplier or your favorite ASIC supplier, the requirement for easy integration with no surprises is the same. Better collaboration between members of the SoC supply chain will definitely help.
Tags: 2014, Atrenta, Chip Design, EDA, EDA & IP, Electronic Design Automation, https://www.facebook.com/pages/Lee-Public-Relations/201964499825219?ref=hl, Intellectual property, IP, IP integration, Lee PR, Lee Public Relations, Semiconductor IP, semiconductors, SoC, System on Chip
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RTL Signoff is certainly one of the hot topics in chip design circles lately, and one that is garnering great interest and concern. I chatted recently with Piyush Sancheti, VP of Marketing at Atrenta, on what it is, why it’s a design imperative, and how it should be done.
