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In my last few posts, I was explaining our focus here in Cadence Verification on creating the OVM to enable an industry wide VIP eco-system, and trying to make verification more of a closed-loop process with our metric-driven verification methodology.  In case you missed the announcement about expanding our VIP portfolio back on October 15th, we just made it a lot easier for you to experience the benefits of the combination…

Hi All,

It always amazes me to see just how many Specman users make use of the interactive command line to load files, set breakpoints, run sims and debug.  I just wanted to update all you command line gurus that, as of the 8.2 release of Specman, a new switch "-e" turns on some cool editing features that you can use directly from the specman command prompt. 

If you use add the -e switch when calling specman:

%…

I and the rest of the Cadence C-to-Silicon Compiler (CtoS) team were thrilled yesterday to learn that EDN selected C-to-Silicon Compiler as one of the "Hot 100 Electronic Products of 2008".

http://www.edn.com/article/CA6622869.html

How about that,  John Cooley!!   www.deepchip.com.

Why does the launch of CtoS in 2008 represent a significant EDA industry milestone? Very simple.

HLS has been the "holy grail" of EDA for…

Last month I had the pleasure of attending a DV Club lunch presentation on analog verification (recall my report on the presentation + comparison to the Trailblazer program).  Consistent with all past DV Club lunches I came away more informed about the subject matter, and with renewed contacts in my local verification community.  Given these positive experiences, I'm happy to relay that the DVClub people have just published…

Even though 2008 will probably go down in history as the year of Doom and Gloom we can find a Ray of Hope here and there. 2008 was a good year for ISX. We entered the year with just a handful of companies using the technology and we will exit with many successful projects completed and new projects starting all the time. The launch of the new cadence.com is also a Ray of Hope. It has been a great experience for me to post…

The other day I saw some posts to the Yahoo Specman group regarding e ports. The last one in the thread asked for some introductory information on ports which I thought might make a good topic for my entry today.

As I was researching what I wanted to include in the post when I came across some related content in Chapter 7 of the Usage and Concepts Guide for e Testbenches manual in the Specman help.  Rather than ramble on…

As a verification engineer, I have always found creating coverage code to be one of the more time consuming tasks to actually execute on for two reasons:

1. While the general process of coverage creation is conceptually simple; in practice, actually figuring out what to can turn out to be more difficult then first anticipated.

2. Sitting down and actually coding all those coverage points can become somewhat tedious. This…

As the 2008 year comes to a close, I wanted to say Thank You!

Thanks to the hard working Cadence people who experimented with new ideas about the Cadence web site, polished those ideas, and included blogging to allow another format for customers and Cadence individuals to extend discussions on EDA, design techniques, and new technology topics.

Thanks to my Cadence friends. It has been a tough economic year for the world…

The irun utility provides a use-model to run simulations with Incisive Simulator in a simple and consistent manner.  The main benefit of irun is that it can simulate the multi-language design & verification environments in a single step by simply specifying all input source files and options on a single command line!!

The following demonstration shows the use-model with real examples:

If the video fails…

The SPB16.2 release now has new MOSFET device Model BSIM4 Support in PSpice

PSpice designers had been requesting support for the BSIM4 Mosfet Model. The BSIM4 model addresses the MOSFET physical effects into sub-100nm regime. It is a physics-based, accurate, scalable, robust and predictive MOSFET spice model for circuit simulation and CMOS technology development.

BSIM4 finds wide application in RF circuits since it's a…

Fellow blogger Joe Hupcey passed along a link covering the recent launch of the BlackBerry Storm. It seems to follow a familiar trend in consumer electronics: great idea, nice product, but the software seems slow and buggy. People send me these articles as if I'm supposed to do something about the situation. The article mentions a specific corner case where the music volume increases when a call comes in, and how Verizon…

In my last post, I talked briefly about constraint layering in which I gave an extremely simple example of how users can layer constraints on an existing base environment to change how that base environment behaves, all without touching the base environment.

Obviously, we all know that our verification tasks are more complicated than that simple example.  Therefore, in this edition, I want to go over some additional features…

Virtuoso Accelerated Parallel Simulator was just released and I asked Ilya Yusim, lead architect for the new simulator and Nebabie Kebebew, product marketing manager, to tell us what is new and different about this simulator. Check out this video to get a better understanding of what this product brings to the table.

If the video fails to embed please click here.  You can also take a look at our feature story…

Last week, we announced the Encounter Digital Implementation System along with a cool associated campaign to raise awareness of the technological challenges addressed by this new system. Check out this video for more details:

If the video fails to embed, please click here.

Links mentioned in this video:

• Visit the Encounter Digital Implementation Campaign page here
• Read more about the prizes here
• Download the offical…

As part of Cadence's commitment to support IEEE 1647 e, Team Specman is launching this blog to serve up technical tips, tricks, examples, and observations about developments in IEEE 1647 "e" language-related technologies, methodologies, Specman core engines, and the…

There are enormous usability updates in the SPB16.2 release of OrCAD Capture. From new ways of managing multiple windows to the ability to place wires and parts using a cross hair cursor - all enhancements are designed to increase ease of use. You can read about the highlights below.

Tabbed windows with docking, floating, and MDI child capabilities:  Now it is easier to manage multiple open windows through tabs that show…

If you were wondering what's new with Virtuoso you may want to check out the latest webinars we offered this fall. The IC6.1 Virtuoso Platform, proven through silicon, enables you to "mind those gaps" by delivering customer proven productivity, product quality and schedule predictability improvements. 

To learn about the latest release of the industry's leading and most comprehensive solution for…

I have the great honor of introducing a wonderful paper on system level verification by Giles Hall. Giles is recognized by all who know him as a verification expert, and was instrumental in the founding of ISX. He worked tirelessly with numerous customers all over Europe and the North America to demonstrate techniques to improve the state of system level verification and explain how the capabilities of ISX could…

VMM users -- welcome to the OVM!  We've been talking together about the benefits of the OVM -- ecosystem-drive business value and built-in ability to scale the technical solution -- for quite a while.  While thousands of verification engineers are already using it, many of you have said "Yes, I see the value, but what about my VMM legacy?" In the tradition of the OVM, Cadence (see press release here

Today is a big day in Digital Implementation land here at Cadence.  Looking around http://cadence.com you'll likely see a lot of information about the new Encounter Digital Implementation System.  I wanted to highlight 3 features (out of the many new features) that I think could be useful to the majority of our users *now*.  Check out this video:

If the video fails to embed, click here.

To download the Encounter…

That's right - an often requested feature from several customers has now been implemented in the SPB16.2 release.

Just a quick "behind the scenes" glimpse of what several Product Team Support AEs provide during each major SPB product release planning. While the Marketing, Technical Marketing, Sales AEs, and R&D help drive the product features guided by customer input and feedback, the SPB Support AEs…