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MediaTek recently gave the new Spectre X Simulator a try, and they talked about their experiences with it at DAC 2019 in a presentation given by YY Chen in the Cadence Theater.

Spoiler alert: they loved it.

MediaTek is the fourth largest fabless IC design company in the world, and they’re ranked #1 in the voice assistant device, android tablet, and network connectivity markets, among others. They, like so many others…

Ah, the office temperature – that eternal debate. As in many offices, ours has some people who feel that they're in the Sahara Desert, others who bundle up like they're in Antarctica, a few who just don't care about the temperature, and some who can't quite figure out if they're ever comfortable, like Goldilocks. There is however no 'perfect' temperature. So many variables impact the physical environment of the office…

Complexity is driving the urgency for advanced artificial intelligence systems more than ever—and that means someone has to supply the tools to create those systems. Cadence is up to the task: we’ve been expanding our AI offerings. If you haven’t already seen what Cadence can do for your AI needs, or if you’re not quite up-to-date on this whole AI boom, let this presentation given by K.T. Moore…

If you’re doing circuit simulation anywhere in the world, you’re probably already familiar with the Cadence Spectre® simulator. The Spectre simulator is an accurate and high-performance SPICE circuit simulator that has established itself as the golden reference analog simulation over many years of use by designers. Now, with smaller geometries and denser chip designs, requiring more performance and capacity, the Spectre…

Some things are rare, good or bad, but they do happen from time to time. And, some happen so regularly, we often take them for granted if good or learn to live with them if bad. But should we? For example, you send out your design for fabrication and the CAM (computer-aided manufacturing) engineer runs a high-end design for manufacturability (DFM) analysis software. The CAM engineer sees DFM issues (almost always!). Now…

In this week’s Whiteboard Wednesdays video, Jacek Duda talks about the next-generation standard, USB4.  What are the benefits? Overlap with existing USB standards? How does it compare with USB 3.x? Watch the video.

https://youtu.be/sKHF8xB-NBk

Test chips are becoming more widespread and more complex at advanced process nodes as design teams utilize early silicon to diagnose problems prior to production. But this approach also is spurring questions about whether this approach is viable at 7nm and 5nm, due to the rising cost of prototyping advanced technology, such as mask tooling and wafer costs.

Semiconductor designers have long been making test chips to validate…

With more and more SoCs employing sophisticated interconnect IP to link multiple processor cores, caches, memories, and dozens of other IP functions, the designs are enabling a new generation of low-power servers and high-performance mobile devices. The complexity of the interconnects and their advanced configurability contributes to already formidable design and verification challenges which lead to the following questions…