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The two obvious ways to implement a complex algorithm are to write a large amount of RTL and synthesize a specialized hardware block, or write a large amount of C and run it on a microprocessor.

The RTL approach has the potential for producing an optimal...

It was MemCon this week. Three keynotes, three parallel tracks each with four presentations. An exhibition. In one day you can soak up the state of the memory world by osmosis. Christine Young live-blogged the keynotes by Chris Rowen of Cadence's Tensilica...

This year's Jasper User Group conference finished up with a dose of realism in a panel session focused on the practicalities of bringing formal techniques into large companies with established flows. What do you tell your boss? How do you get skeptical...

In this week's Whiteboard Wednesdays video, Charles Qi takes a closer look at IP subsystems and how they can be used to build automotive applications.

https://youtu.be/7b-FAgZ7yJ4

The Allegro PCB Editor release has a few new capabilities related to symbol pins.

The Symbol Editor has been enhanced with a new utility designed to automatically renumber pins based on positional qualifiers. The path to the utility is ‘Layout – Renumber...

Rapid consumer product revolution continues to be enabled by semiconductor technology innovation. Driven by Moore’s Law, memory capacity increases, memory access rates, and single chip integration leads to new capabilities, merging of functionality, and increased battery life. Consumer products are fast followers of leading edge electronics such as smart phones and networking infrastructure. We consumers are cost-sensitive…

If you think power isn’t important then you must have been living under a rock for the last decade. But you could try asking Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, too.

You have probably heard by now, since you are presumably something to do with the semiconductor...

It is MemCon on Tuesday. I talked to David Lin to find out how it all started. He was employee #3 at Denali, the first non-engineer. He started as an AE and ended up as VP marketing. Denali was founded in 1995 as a sort of rogue EDA company in a niche...

TSMC and Samsung Both in iPhone 6s

It emerged that for the Apple iPhone 6s and 6s+, Apple decided to take a dual-source foundry approach with both Samsung and TSMC building the A9 application processor that powers it. Since these are different processes...

It was the Jasper User Group JUG this week. I first went to JUG several years ago when Jasper Design Automation was still an independent company and JUG was held in Cupertino. It was clear to me then that Jasper Gold was the best formal verification technology...

Each time I start working on an introductory paragraph for a new USB blog entry, I think about how big this interface standard has grown to be, and each time I’m amazed. Do you know that nowadays the annual estimate of USB-enabled device shipment is 3 billion? I mean nowadays, we are about to see the impact of all the new specs – USB Type-C, USB Alternate Modes, USB Power Delivery, and USB 3.1 Gen 2. Devices equipped…

7nm is already passé it seems! Today Cadence and imec announced the tapeout of the first 5nm test chip. Actually it is two chips. These use a combination of extreme ultra-violet (EUV) along with traditional 193nm immersion lithography (193i) with self...

Yes, it’s true. The Cadence gravitational field finally pulled me back and I am now blogging here at Cadence.com. I’m being thrown in at the deep end since Cadence has a big announcement with imec (see next post), it’s the Jasper User Group Conference...

In this week's Whiteboard Wednesday video, Dennis Crespo highlights the performance and power features of the new Tensilica Vision P5 DSP architecture for mobile, automotive, and security applications.

https://youtu.be/0Rg33B5dmO0

I blog from time to time about what’s new in Ethernet. I have just returned from the latest 802.3 meeting in Florida. IEEE 802.3 is the forum that maintains and updates Ethernet standards.

Here are some photos from Florida, I particularly like the one of the manatee I saw near the meeting hotel during a lunchtime walk:

There seems to be more activity going on in 802.3 than ever before with Ethernet…

In this week's Whiteboard Wednesdays video, Charles Qi continues his discussion focused on technologies for the automotive industry. This week's topic highlights Cadence high-performance memory and interface IPs that address the challenges for memory and I/O bandwidth in automotive applications.

https://youtu.be/r47KnHPH6g8

The Allegro PCB Editor 16.6 Pastemask to Pastemask DRC now checks the ‘Package Geometry - Pastemask_Top’ shapes within the same symbol.

Read on for more details …

In Allegro PCB Editor, open a library symbol (e.g. pastemaskdrc.dra). Enable Pastemask DRC mode.

Setup – Constraints – Design Modes (Soldermask):

 

Open the Design Options (Soldermask) form and enter a value of 10 for Pastemask to…

The MIPI Alliance has developed dozens of specifications, standardizing all interfaces of mobile devices that are now part of almost any smartphone. If you are reading this blog through a mobile device (as you probably are...), the text and graphics you see on your screen went through the MIPI DSI interface, and the picture or video you took earlier with the phone’s camera was captured through the MIPI CSI interface and…

In this week's Whiteboard Wednesdays video, Charles Qi explains future automotive Ethernet networks and Cadence automotive Ethernet MAC IP.

https://youtu.be/Lao1EmUIuqE

In this week's Whiteboard Wednesday's video, the third in a three-part series, Pulin Desai discusses the criteria for selecting an imaging and vision processor engine for embedded applications.

https://youtu.be/fRybpm92DK8

The Incisive vManager tool for professional verification planning and management has now been officially released for almost two years. As demand for the Incisive vManager solution increases, so does our broad-scale support. Many of our users, however, are unaware of how much free training is actually available through Cadence as video content, available directly via Cadence Online Support (COS). This video content is…

The Allegro PCB Editor 16.6 ‘Replace Padstack’ command is now available as a context menu item when the selection set consists of mixed padstack instances.  Prior to 16.6, the selection set would have to be limited to common padstacks. This is available in General Edit Application mode.

Read on for more details …

The Options Panel now supports the ‘Ignore FIXED property’. The ‘Pin Number’ field has been…

In this week's Whiteboard Wednesday's video, Charles Qi discusses how Cadence scaleable DSP technology can help companies build products for automotive applications.

https://youtu.be/w7NWExhOSZg