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As we wrap up 2016, I wanted to share the quick access links to all of our OnDemand Webinars from Q4 2016.

** Also, we are collecting your wishlists for 2017 webinars here. **

Please click this link to participate in our 2017 webinar survey.

Filters, amplifiers, linear and switched-mode power supplies, and other analog/mixed-signal designs require…

You probably already know that much of the traffic inside the data center, and indeed the backbones routes of the internet, all use fiber optic (glass) rather than copper. There are a number of reasons, the main one being is that it is easier to achieve...

The 17.2 Allegro PCB Editor has new concurrent team design capabilities.

For details, please read Michael Catrambone’s blog - Why Move Up to Allegro 17.2-2016? New Concurrent Team Design Capability (Reason 2 of 10).

Concurrent team design (PCB team design) has been part of Allegro PCB Editor for some time now; the capability requires the partitioning of the master design into separate sections so each of the team…

There are several areas where semiconductor technology and society come together. One is the future of work. As computers and deep learning get more powerful, there are a lot of jobs that potentially can be handled more economically by computers. For...

In this week's Whiteboard Wednesdays video, the second in a three-part series, Charles Qi continues the discussion on automotive functional safety and takes a closer look at the ISO 26262 standard.

https://youtu.be/ZhFY15vUxwg

The Allegro PCB 17.2-2016 release is loaded with enhancements related to the DRILL.

We have added Pad Definition support for the Actual Drill Tool, Backdrill Tool, Square Drill, Counter Bore/Sink objects and expanded tolerance for slots. By popular demand, Backdrill sites are now fully supported with DRC clearance rules (Top 10 Reason #4).
Also new is a behavioral change to the standard Drill Hole Spacing DRC. Back in…

Are you still crawling through the set of tabs, panes, or tables in the Hierarchy Editor (HED) to find the information you are looking for? That must be frustrating, isn’t it? You could try the new Search functionality in HED that will help you get access to the required information rather quickly.

In a dynamic environment, a search functionality makes your application more interactive and improves your productivity…

Recently the RISC-V Fifth Workshop took place at Google in Mountain View. As always, there were lots of presentations from academics. RISC-V has been a big hit there as the only instruction set architecture that is feasible for use in teaching and research...

Last week, Lip-Bu Tan, the CEO of Cadence, received the Dr. Morris Chang Exemplary Leadership Award from GSA. Before getting to the award, let me say a few words about who GSA are, and who Morris Chang is, in case you are not familiar with them.

Morris...

BarCamp was inspired by an invitation-only participant-driven conference, named Foo Camp. The first BarCamp was held in Palo Alto, California, in 2005. Since then it has become an international trend when it comes to workshop events. According to the...

At IEDM last week, there were papers in eight parallel tracks for three days. At the end of session #2, on the first day, there were two "late" papers by TSMC and by the consortium of IBM, GLOBALFOUNDRIES, and Samsung talking about 7nm.

Interface Element (IE) Setup can be one of the most challenging parts in AMS Designer. If you use the traditional Connect Rule/Connect Modue Based Setup, it requires you to juggle between multiple windows to compose the setup flow.  However, with this new Interface Element/IE-card Based Setup, you can configure your connect rules and connect modules, specify the scope for the built-in IE cards, and set values of important…

It's a new year soon. And that means New Year Resolutions. I will go to the gym...and the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.

You might have seen something about the Microsoft Hololens, which was announced at Hot Chips...

I have been working with computers for a long time. I first learned to program in the late 1960s, when a computer was a mainframe in a special room with its priesthood of operators, a long way from the PC, never mind smartphones. Since I was often the...

https://youtu.be/wtOOIg32ma8

Monday: Lip-Bu Tan is honored by GSA with the Maurice Chang Exemplary Leadership Award

Tuesday: IEDM, the International Electronic Devices Meeting. I'll cover some of the advanced process announcements.

Wednesday...

The Sunday of IEDM there were two all-day short courses. The one I attended was Technology Options for the 5nm Node. It was organized by An Steegen of imec. I am not going to attempt to cover the entire day's presentations in a short post like this, but...

In this week's Whiteboard Wednesdays video, the last of a 3-part series, Lana Chan discusses the evolution of PCI Express and the changes associated with PCIe Gen 4.

https://youtu.be/fHaAyK1OMls

You must have come across and experienced the capabilities of Pin to Trunk routing and its robust features. The Pin to Trunk routing connects an individual pin to a trunk. This routing style is usually used when a spine structure is required.

With complex and large designs, there are large array of pin connections. At times, while routing we encounter issues with the array of pin connection. Have you ever thought:…

We all know the futuristic vision of the world just around the corner. The vision where we tell our smart home that we’ve just left work at the end of a long day, and we’re heading home. Our home then tells the thermostat to warm up or cool down, lights to turn on, and the oven to start baking the lasagna we left in it that morning. We arrive to a warm, brightly lit home, and hot, freshly cooked food.

You…

I wrote recently about Eben Upton's presentation about the genesis of business-card-sized Raspberry Pi, and how they went from optimistically hoping to sell 10,000 to surpassing 10 million three months ago. If you don't know what Raspberry Pi is, then...

One of the announcements at the recent RISC-V workshop was by SiFive. This is the company started by the creators of the RISC-V instruction set architecture (Krste, Andrew, and Yunsup) to commercialize silicon implementations.

Four months ago, at the...

We'd like to welcome guest writer Yanyan Qiao from our Cadence Japan AE team.  Many thanks for her contribution!

Today analog design has become very challenging. Analog circuit designers need tools which can provide deep insight into circuit behavior. The MMSIM simulator family provides device check functions, as well as static circuit topology checks and dynamic behavior check functions for typical design problem…

The fifth (V^th?) RISC-V workshop took place this week at Google in Mountain View. This was actually the third workshop this year. Rick O'Connor, the executive director of the RISC-V foundation, opened the meeting. "It's been quite a year," he said, giving...