Selecting the proper ADC can appear a formidable task. A direct approach is to go to the selection guides and parametric search engines. Enter the sampling rate, resolution, power supply voltage, and other properties. Click ‘find’. But can one approach the task with greater understanding — particularly of the main architectures — and get better […]
When microprocessor core developer ARM started in a barn outside Cambridge, England, just over fifteen years ago, odds were against it making a global impact. The team of “12 engineers and me”, as then CEO and now chairman Sir Robin Saxby puts it, “had no patents, a working prototype and £1.75m of cash.” Without the […]
The advent of extreme fine line processes at 130nm or less presents many challenges. On the back end, optimizing a design to manage physical effects such as power, heat, and timing is more daunting than ever. At the front end, implementing a system-on-chip’s (SoC) behavior and features is becoming equally difficult. The early exploration of […]
T he explosion in consumer electronics, especially in the wireless/handheld devices marketplace, has placed a tremendous technical and business burden on engineers in the design of these products. Design teams carry the responsibility of catering to often conflicting and always challenging product specifications. The product needs to be optimized on multiple demand vectors with little […]
Introduction The emergence of the SystemVerilog and PSL assertion languages promises to improve the effectiveness of existing verification flows. First, assertions give better local observability of the functionality they represent. Second, the assertions augment the textual specification to provide a more formal, executable representation of the functionality. Third, since the assertion languages have common semantics […]
No one disputes the promise inherent in the concept of design reuse. But the true value of what has been delivered so far is often debated. This paper proposes a reuse methodology that is both practical and real and which uses behavioral synthesis as its driving technology. It discusses the most basic elements of behavioral […]
Introduction As semiconductor manufacturing moves into the sub-100nm realm, the need for increased cooperation and communication between design and manufacturing becomes more apparent. Manufacturing is becoming increasingly complex, and many of the principles that have guided design and manufacturing no longer apply. Some of the major changes occurring in wafer manufacturing include: The industry is […]
Introduction A synthesized eye diagram begins with an accurate TDT measurement of a linear device. The validity of this approach has been proven across a number of case studies and is now commonly accepted in the communication industry. The measurement allows the device’s eye response to be accurately generated by an advanced synthesis algorithm such […]
Companies and mask shops already have plans and policies to secure the storage and transmission of sensitive layout VLSI data. These include confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements, and encryption. However, traditional VLSI file formats such as GDSII never popularized the type of constructs that facilitate intellectual property (IP) protection. The OASIS format does have these constructs. […]
Nanometer scaling severely inhibits the path to achieve sustainable yield. In response more responsibility for forecasting potential failures must shift to design for manufacturing (DFM) methodologies that can be applied early in the design process. Yet, while these hold much promise, manufacturing test and failure analysis remains at the forefront of determining why chips fail. […]
