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At CDNLive in Taiwan last year, MediaTek presented their experiences with Perspec System Verifier. This post assumes that you know the basics about Perspec. If you need an introduction then look at my earlier posts:

• A Perspective on Perspec
• Perspec...

Most of the PCB designers I know are creatures of habit just like I was...

we have our favorite colors, layer names, customized keyboard and our number one goal is to see how many nets we can route in one day. Very rarely do we change – but when we do it’s either because we changed employers or we are forced to because the tried and true processes don’t work any longer.

Can you relate?

Those of you…

At the recent IEDM in San Francisco, Coventor organized a panel titled BEOL Barricades: Navigating Future Semiconductor Yield, Reliability, and Cost Challenges. The BEOL, back end of line, is the metal, although where it begins and ends, as you will see...

Dolby Laboratories was founded by Ray Dolby. I always thought he was English, but it turns out he was American, although the company was indeed founded in Britain, back in 1965, hence my confusion. It moved to San Francisco a couple of years later. For...

In this week's Whiteboard Wednesdays video, the last in a three-part series on automotive functional safety, Charles Qi covers active safety  and how Cadence Design IP implements these features.

https://youtu.be/6IDx7vVA6YE

Just before the holidays I gave in and purchased an Amazon Echo, the small hockey puck one called the Echo Dot. It was on sale for under $40. To be honest, I don't need another gadget and it doesn't do a whole lot of things that I need doing. Plus, I...

You probably know that DAC is run by a company called MP Associates. It was started by Marie and Pat Pistilli (hence MP). Unfortunately Marie Pistilli died earlier this year. What is less well known is that Pat Pistilli started DAC and is probably the...

https://youtu.be/bGsKR-RG0fY

Coming from Mission San Juan Bautista, California

Monday: Interview with Pat Pistilli on the origins of EDA and of DAC

Tuesday: Amazon's Alexa voice user interface. Is VUI the new GUI?

Wednesday: Coventor panel...

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...