IP can be a pain in the butt. Any large company will presumably have tons of IP, some from inside, some from outside, being used in a variety of projects. Each piece of IP may be changed to do things differently or even to fix bugs. If two or more projects rely on the same IP, then those changes might benefit all the projects, or they might diverge. Regardless, it can be really, really hard to manage all of this across a large company.

IC Manage recently did a Read More → "New Tools for Managing IP"

High-level synthesis (HLS) has been all about C (or C++) to RTL. But when you’re validating your algorithm, it’s easier to work at the TLM level for thorough simulations that can complete in your lifetime. But once you’re done with that and ready to create gates, you need more than a TLM model; you need a detailed pin-level model, and so far that’s been a manual job.

Mentor is trying to make this easier by separating out the interface portion of the module, and then allowing for either TLM … Read More → "Switching Classes"

When two chips talk to each other, they do so over a convoluted path that involves signals leaving a driver, going to a pad, up through a wire and other package interconnect, up and down and around along a board trace, and back into and through a package to another pad, finally arriving at the desired input. All along the way they brush up against other signals that may also be switching very quickly. Meanwhile, the power driving the output and input circuits may experience noise (and, in fact, that noise may be different on each chip). When you& … Read More → "End-to-End Signal Analysis"

When you need to verify test suites that drag on for millions (or billions) of clock cycles, it really helps to run them on some hardware – assuming you need clock accuracy. Otherwise, well, “legacy code” acquires a new meaning: the project you started and passed to your progeny because simulation couldn’t finish in your lifetime.

There are various emulation systems out there, but if you’ve done a lot of work on your own prototype, then redoing the design on an emulator might seem like redundant work.

In the … Read More → "Home-Brewed Emulators"