I went to the DAC Web-site Exhibitor Page and counted 23 new companies exhibiting at DAC.   They span the world of design from A to Z.  We have aquintos LLC – (Model-based system design tools) to Zocalo Tech (Assertion Based Verification tools).

This leads me to conclude despite the ongoing challenges to the industry, innovators and entrepreneurs are still working hard to bring their new technologies to the design world.  Here are three new companies that are in the back-end of the design flow I think are worth taking the time to look at:

Cybereda (booth #164) is showing their new parallel SPICE tool and a new Analog Design Debug System.  They say you will get a 10X breakthrough in simulation speed and 10X faster bug killing.   I am glad to see new automation tools for analog designers.

Grid Simulation Technology (booth #1262) have two new products, NanoRAIL and SimCHECK, for tackling complex IC power  grid problems including IR voltage drop and electro-migration (EM) and the qualification of complex power network analysis results.   From what I can tell, they have a speed, accuracy and capacity breakthrough for power-net problems.

Coventor (booth #269) provides 3D MEMS simulation, analysis and design automation software for the development of micro- and nano-scale devices and systems.   Coventor has created an IC compatible MEMS + IC design flow. Its MEMS+ suite integrates with tools from Cadence and The Mathworks to enable IC designers to more efficiently incorporate MEMS into their product designs.

And finally come by the EDACafe booth #1015, and see our video studio on the floor of the DAC show.  We will be recording over 40 interviews of executives and industry leaders in front of our green screen.  I look forward to seeing you there.

+Graham

I was at the SNUG San Jose event taking place in Santa Clara (funny how that is) and I took photos at the Designer Community Expo.   There were 50 exhibitors participating.   The Expo was divided into different communities:  Computer Infrastructure, Custom Design and AMS Verification, FPGA, IC Design, IC verification, IP and System Design.   Kim Anderson from Synopys was my guide to the Expo.  She did an excellent job shepherding me around the event.  See if you can find her in the Photo Gallery at SNUG San Jose Photos.

Phil Morris, Synopsys World-Wide Marketing Director for Strategic Alliances gave a video interview that covered the background for the event and the evolution from the Interoperability Fair seen at previous SNUGs.   You can see the interview at Designer Community Expo Video.

I have started to use a different interview technique where the camera is looking over my right shoulder during the interview.   Viewers get to see the back of my head but more of the interviewee.  Let me know if you like the change.

Recent Conference Interviews:

ISQED March 22-24 – 22 videos

DVCon Feb. 22-25 – 6 videos

Best Wishes for a Happy Easter!
+Graham

A new startup was launched this week that offers a new SPICE simulator that takes advantage of multi-CPU computers to speed analysis of transistor circuits.    Cybereda is the name of the company and was founded by CK Lee, an EDA veteran who has many years experience with analog simulation at companies such as Nassda, Synopsys and EPIC.

The speedup claimed by this new SPICE offering is 10x over popular commercial simulators.  I think they maybe comparing their runtimes to HSPICE.   While faster SPICE simulations are always appreciated, Cybereda also claims that commercial SPICE offerings can easily product incorrect results even with simple circuits.  I took a look at their web-site and they show an example of a MOS device driving a capacitive load.   The commercial SPICE simulator gave the wrong answer.  See http://www.cybereda.com/?page_id=12

My take-away from this is that you always need to check what your SPICE simulator is doing and understand what the impact step-size and tolerance settings have on the results.

Have you been fooled by a SPICE simulation?   Let me know what happened to you.

Happy Holidays to Everyone!

+Graham

I was at PCB West last week on Sept. 15th.   It was taking place at the Santa Clara Marriott in their large ballroom.  I came in the mid-afternoon so I could take photos for a photo gallery, and to some video interviews for PCB and EDAC Cafe clients.   I had the sense the show was more subdued than previous years but Show management really worked to make it easy for folks to attend, get a free lunch and see some open sessions.  Kudos to Alyson over at Up Media Group for putting an excellent event.

You can see the photo gallery of the show floor at PCB West 2009 Pictures.

The video interviews were with DownStream, EMA Design Automation, Prototron Circuits, Oak-Mitsui and with Valor.  The world of PCB design continues to evolve as it meets the challenges of ever-higher signal frequencies, the need for more efficient and automated methods to create designs, and to improve collaboration.

All of these topics and more are covered in the PCB West 2009 Video Interviews.

Let me know your thoughts about PCBWest and the interviews.

+Graham

After a several week hiatus due to DAC at the end of July, and 10 days of vacation in Oregon and California,  this blog post returns.

First, all 44 DAC videos recorded by yours truly, are now up on EDACafe, after many hours of editing. There is even a ‘triple play’, with Tom Fitzpatrick, Stephen Bailey and Harry Foster of  Mentor.  See them all at DAC Videos.  Let me know what you think of them.

Secondly, David Heller, president of IBSystems (and all of the Cafés) went to Infineon Raceway as a guest of HP.  I recommend his article which is posted on EDACafe. You will see a cool car  and hear some amazingly LOUD engine noises from the embedded sound clip.  See it here.

And finally the half-thing is my oldest son turned 16 and is 6cm taller than me and still growing.  I wonder when it will stop!

+Graham

I have been watching the Tour De France cycling race and it reminds me a lot about DAC. There is the mad sprint in the last weeks before the show to get the customer input and marketing ready. There is the massing of the exhibitors on Sunday with the EDAC and Gary Smith kick-off events. The well-known players are back this year, but the up and coming competitors will be on Smith’s and Cooley “Must See” lists. Meetings are held to drive the main pack, the peloton, into a new direction or pace. Announcements are made to pull away from the crowd and get the buzz leadership. And finally on Thursday, the last stage, we are tired but fulfilled, knowing for another year we have made a difference for designers world-wide.

If you want to step back in time, you can check out the EDACafe 2008 DAC Videos. EDACafe will, of course have video interviews at the 2009 event. You can always email me graham@edacafe.com to find out more.

+Graham

P.S.  Who will take the “yellow jersery” and for how long?

I just heard this week that the Cadence CDNLive! customer event normally held at the San Jose Convention Center has been changed into a virtual event with just webinars.  The reasons according to Cadence are that the current global financial environment is impacting everyone in the electronics industry, fewer resources are available to dedicate to critical projects, and travel budgets are limited.

What will the virtual event be like? Cadence says these webinars will be an opportunity for users to share their work and present their papers to an even larger audience—and a wider range of their peers—than what was anticipated at the face-to-face conference.  For those customers that want to rub elbows with Cadence staff, the San Francisco Design Automation Conference in July is offered as a substitute event. The virtual CDNLive !will take place on some date in October.  The other CDNLive! events in Japan, Taiwan, Israel, and India will proceed as planned.

Last years event was well attended.   You can see the photo gallery on EDACafe at CDLive! 2008 in San Jose, CA.

If you haven’t met Lip-Bu Tan, CEO of Cadence, a video interview of Lip-Bu taken at the European CDNLive event is now available.  He discusses what Cadence’s focus will be and the stock price he is shooting for.  You can see it at Lip-Bu Tan CDNLive! interview.

I am wondering what the reaction will be to going virtual.   Will this please customers?   Will there be more attendees as Cadence claims?   Let me know your thoughts.

+Graham

Denali is the sponsor of MEMCON 2009, which going on this week in Santa Clara.   I spoke with David Lin at Denali regarding the conference and what some of the announcements will be.  In particular we talked about the DDR-PHY Interface (DFI) spec version 2.1  (at the www.ddr-phy.org wb-site).   It includes low-power features supporting DDR3 and the newly released LP-DDR2 memory technologies from JEDEC.   As well, at MEMCON, is a track  on “Beyond Flash – Defining Storage Class Memories (SCM),” sponsored by Web-Feet Research (now that’s a name you can remember!).

You can here the entire interview at:  “MEMCON News”, Dave Lin, VP of Marketing, Denali

What I found most interesting about Storage Class Memories is that the vision for the future is to have a memory system that has a file interface but with the speed and performance of fast silicon.   Smaller system stacks and lower power are some of the claimed benefits.

If you couldn’t attend the conference, you can see the picture gallery of the exhibits and luncheon at:  MEMCON Exhibits.

Mark Gogolewski, Denali CTO  gave one of the keynotes at MEMCON.  You can see a short clip at:  Mark Gogolewski MEMCON 2009 Keynote Clip

+Graham

Atom processors from Intel are defining the new “netbook” slice of the personal computer market.   They are very popular with ‘power’ users, who want to have another computer to use because of the convenient size and almost disposable cost.  Ultimately targeted for the smaller platforms such as smart phones, Atom-based computers are surprisingly powerful.   If an Atom notebook PC has everything I need to do my day-to-day job then maybe it will begin to steal market share from the traditional notebook market.   Another trend that may accelerate this shift is the use of  ‘cloud computing’ where data is stored in the cloud (some server farm on the net).   Cloud computing reduces further the need for a local high-performance CPU.

Even Intel insiders are wondering what will be the business  impact  caused by the success of the Atom processor.   Will it poison their traditional microprocessor franchise?  Let me know your thoughts!

+Graham