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SoC and IP: JEDEC launches new SSD reliability standards, plans in-depth SSD tutorial in San Jose, October 5

archive

An article in ComputerWorld reports that JEDEC (www.jedec.org) has just announced two new standards for evaluating SSD performance and reliability: JESD218 Solid-State Drive (SSD) Requirements and Endurance Test Method and JESD219 Solid-State Drive Endurance Workloads. JESD218 defines SSD requirements including conditions of use and corresponding endurance verification requirements. SSD endurance should be rated using…
- 23 Sep 2010
SoC and IP: Crucial SSDs hit $1/Gbyte, with a crucial caveat

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The Bright Side of News (BSN, www.bsn.com) Web site reports today that Crucial is selling its M225 drives for $1/Gbyte (256Gbytes = $256) but there’s a catch or two depending on your perspective. First, the BSN site points out that these are MLC drives and implies that they’re not the world’s fastest SSDs but Crucial’s 256Gbyte M225 drive has a rated read/write speed of 250/200 Mbytes/sec, which is not a shabby speed…
- 23 Sep 2010
Digital Design: Five-Minute Tutorial: Creating a NONDEFAULT Rule

Kari

Ah, the NONDEFAULT rule. This is a routing rule that is, well, not the default! It usually consists of double-wide or triple-wide metal, and at least double-wide spacing, but it can be whatever you like as long as it follows DRC rules (no violating the min or max metal widths, for example). NONDEFAULT rules are typically used to route clock nets or other sensitive nets. If you are very lucky, your tech LEF came with some…
- 22 Sep 2010
SoC and IP: Top 10 SSD benefits: Samsung publishes list

archive

Samsung, SSD vendor and the world’s leader in Flash memory, has just published a list of the top 10 benefits of using SSDs. Here they are, somewhat tongue-in-cheek and unedited.

1. Speed Up Your Boot-Up: SSD knows that «go» means «go». Just turn it on and begin working in less than 30 seconds.

2. Zip through File Searches: Remember the last time you attempted a simple e-mail search using a Hard Disk Drive (HDD)…
- 22 Sep 2010
SoC and IP: Oracle optimizes Unbreakable Linux for SSDs. Improves access times by 137%.

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This week at its OpenWorld event held in San Francisco, Oracle announced the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel for Oracle Linux. First and foremost, Oracle Linux is optimized to run Oracle applications software. Buried in the bigger, better, faster claims however is this curious note: Oracle claims that the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel is 137% faster at accessing files on SSDs than Red Hat Compatible Kernel. This is an example…
- 22 Sep 2010
System, PCB, & Package Design : What's Good About Differential Impedance in Allegro Constraint Manager? It's in SPB16.3!

Jerry GenPart

The ability to constrain or report Differential Impedance from within Constraint Manager (CM) has been a long standing request. The SPB16.3 Allegro PCB Editor Advanced Constraints feature allows customization of a user-defined differential impedance constraint in CM.
Constraint Manager has the ability to report and Design Rule Check (DRC) single-ended impedance in the Electrical domain, Net — Routing — Impedance worksheet…
- 22 Sep 2010
Analog/Custom Design: Things You Didn't Know About Virtuoso: ADE XL -- Where Did My Data Go?

stacyw

Last week I got to attend a "Social Media Summit" here at Cadence. Jeepers, a "summit." I feel so important. Anyway, being the kind of person I am, one of the things that stuck in my mind was that they told us not to "tweet aggressively." Got it. Should I ever decide to "tweet", I promise to do so in a completely non-threatening manner. Seriously though (since it's quite likely…
- 21 Sep 2010
SoC and IP: Samsung whacks DDR3 SDRAM with 36nm stick, knocks 30% off the cost. Elpida and Micron also announce shrinks.

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Samsung just announced that it is readying 4Q volume production of 2Gbit DDR3 chips using a 36nm process technology, down from the present 46nm. The shrink will cut the cost 30% and should result in a $1 production cost for a 2Gbit device according to Digitimes.com. In related news, Elpida has announced that it’s readying the transition from 63nm to 45nm SDRAM production and Micron announced a shift from 50nm to 42nm…
- 21 Sep 2010
SoC and IP: STEC’s ZeusRAM DRAM-based 3.5-inch SSD has 23 microsecond latency, uses Flash for power-fail backup

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This week at Oracle OpenWorld, STEC introduced a DRAM-based, Flash-backed, 6Gbps SAS SSD packaged in a 3.5-inch form factor. The ZeusRAM drive uses DRAM as the primary storage mechanism, which drops data latency below 23 microseconds (fast, fast, fast). For data permanence, STEC’s press release says that the DRAM is “fully backed up” by the Flash. Most likely, the drive contains enough energy storage, possibly in the…
- 21 Sep 2010
SoC and IP: Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter crashes, reboots for fifth time

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On September 15, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) went into “safe mode” for the fifth time in two years. “Safe mode” is NASA-speak for entry into standby mode following an on-board computer crash and reboot. NASA’s MRO team successfully restarted the MRO’s computer three days later, which is significantly better than the previous such incident in August 2009. Back then, the MRO needed months to wake up. So why is…
- 21 Sep 2010
Verification: e Templates and Aspect Oriented Programming

teamspecman

In a recent blog - "e Templates: A Nifty Way To Create Reusable Code", Corey Goss wrote about the useful feature of template types, which lets you write reusable code.
In this post I'll show how the combination of templates and aspect-oriented programming (AOP) allows you to make such reusable code even more flexible. This combination is indeed unique for the e language. As you surely know, AOP allows you…
- 21 Sep 2010
SoC and IP: Just how close to the end of NAND Flash are we?

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One of the surprises that came from the many excellent presentations given at GlobalFoundrries’ Global Technology Conference (GTC) on September 1 at the Santa Clara Convention Center was a down-and-dirty discussion of the limits of current optical lithography by Senior VP of Technology Gregg Bartlett. Currently, we’re using immersion lithography with 193nm light sources to produce features as small as the mid-20nm range…
- 20 Sep 2010
SoC and IP: PhotoFast SSD leverages PCIe x8 to smash past Gbyte/sec SSD transfer-rate barrier

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Want a really fast SSD? You’ll need really fast I/O and PhotoFast’s GM-PowerDrive-LSI SSD employs a PCIe x8 interface to deliver peak read/write speeds of 1500/1400 Mbytes/sec. That’s smokin’ fast, well past the Gbyte/sec read/write barrier and way, way faster than anything possible with single SATA and SAS SSDs. The GM-PowerDrive-LSI drive plugs into a PCIe expansion slot and will be offered in capacities of 256Gbytes…
- 20 Sep 2010
SoC and IP: Intel IDF 2010: SemiAccurate spots Intel SSD with 25nm Flash, new proto SandForce Controller

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We were told that it’s coming and SemiAccurate snapped a photo of a prototype SSD clearly labeled with Intel’s 25nm Flash chips and an as-yet-undiscussed SandForce SSD controller chip at last week’s Intel Developers Forum in San Francisco (IDF 2010). To see the photo, click here.
- 20 Sep 2010
SoC and IP: Can magic BEANs eventually grow phase-change memory into a commercial reality?

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Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) and the University of California Berkeley have made nanoparticle versions of a germanium tin eutectic alloy that can assume the same sort of amorphous and crystalline states that other materials do in prototype phase-change memory (PCM). Because of the nanoparticles’ low thermal mass, the thermally-excited state transitions take only nanoseconds to occur. The…
- 20 Sep 2010
Digital Design: Encounter Puzzler #2: Finding Registers Beneath a Hierarchy

BobD

I hope you enjoyed our first Encounter Puzzler: Where Did My Fences Go? The source of inspiration for this week's puzzler came from an internal alias that we have here at Cadence where folks ask and answer questions about Encounter. An applications engineer received a request from a customer and wanted to know: How can I select all of the registers beneath a given logical hierarchy?

The image above shows the…
- 20 Sep 2010
SoC and IP: Intel Fellow Speaks SSD Truth at IDF: SSDs “may never” compete with HDDs on cost/Gbyte

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TechRadar.com reports that Intel Fellow Knut S. Grimsrud said SSDs “may never” compete with HDDs on a cost/Gbyte basis. Grimsrud spoke at this week’s Intel Developers Forum (IDF). He’s Intel’s Technology and Manufacturing Group Director of Storage. He suggested that the time when SSDs become cheaper than HDDs on a cost/Gbyte basis is "quite a way off" and that it "may actually never be the case" that the price crossover…
- 17 Sep 2010
SoC and IP: Will SD cards become SSDs for the rest of us?

archive

Last night, I came across this interesting article on the ZDNet site about SD cards possibly replacing SSDs. The article’s timely because of the recent announcement made earlier this month by the SD Association about new standards that will increase I/O speeds in future SD card interfaces (previously covered in this blog here). The new SD card interface standards announced by the SD Association set I/O rates nearing 100…
- 16 Sep 2010
SoC and IP: SandForce’s big score: $25M investment round and quad-controller PCIe x4 SSD from OCZ

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This is SandForce’s week. First the SSD controller-chip vendor announced $25M worth of D-round investment funding to help it design better, faster controllers. Michael Raam, president and CEO of SandForce, said “This new funding will help us bring our next-generation products to market, expand our customer and partner support infrastructure, and accelerate our core technology development that will extend our market leadership…
- 15 Sep 2010
Verification: The Best C++ Debugger is Not the Best SystemC Debugger

jasona

I mentioned in a previous article that I have two girls who are excellent debaters. In debate, they learn how to use evidence and logic to prove or disprove points about the specific cases they debate. During recent discussions with SystemC Virtual P...
- 15 Sep 2010
System, PCB, & Package Design : What's Good About Allegro GRE Rake Functionality? You’ll Need the SPB16.3 Release to See!

Jerry GenPart

The SPB16.3 Global Route Environment (GRE) Expanded Rakes functionality provides better visualization of the connectivity of the Bundles. In previous versions, this functionality was only provided when the user moved the gather point. Now this functionality is provided at two levels – the design level through Design Parameters, or at the individual bundle level through the Bundle’s properties.

For more information…
- 15 Sep 2010
Digital Design: Five-Minute Tutorial: Encounter Command Line Help

Kari

Hi everyone, and welcome to the first Five-Minute Tutorial! I have several things planned for this series. Today we're going to look at getting help on the command line in the Encounter Digital Implementation (EDI) system.

Sometimes in the middle of an EDI session, you want to run a command but you can't remember the exact name, or the exact options. Sometimes you don't even know if a command exists to do what you…
- 15 Sep 2010
SoC and IP: What’s the best SSD for less than $150? Techspot publishes budget SSD roundup.

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A year ago, Techspot.com tested and reviewed SSDs and the least expensive drive it worked with at the time cost $270. This year, Techspot has limited its testing to SSDs costing $150 or less. What a difference a year has made. These drives aren’t big--in the 32- to 40-Gbyte capacity range. The competitors tested include the 40-Gbyte OCZ Agility 2 ($135), the 40-Gbyte OCZ Vertex 2 ($124), the 64-Gbyte OCZ Onyx ($130)…
- 14 Sep 2010
SoC and IP: SanDisk and NDS collaborate to add features and video on demand to set-top boxes through low-cost SSD

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NAND Flash vendor SanDisk and set-top box software vendor NDS Group Ltd are collaborating to bring a low-cost means of converting existing set-top box designs into DVRs (digital video recorders) with features such as live pause and video on demand. The hardware vehicle will be SanDisk’s P4 SSDs, which are available in SATA, PATA, and BGA interfaces and it appears to be the SATA interface that’s involved here. The drives…
- 14 Sep 2010
Verification: All I Really Need to Know About MDV I Learned From Hollywood - Part 3

tomacadence

This is my third and final blog entry in a series using quotes from famous Hollywood movies to highlight the key concepts about metric-driven verification (MDV). As a reminder, here's the four-phase Cadence MDV flow:

In my first post I dealt with the "plan" phase and the concept of planning for both coverage and check metrics from the…
- 14 Sep 2010

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