The use of poly-Si TFTs for active matrix OLEDs (AMOLEDs) allows peripheral circuits to be integrated on a glass substrate at low cost and reduces the number of external driver ICs. The prospect of such integration means it is likely that emerging system-on-glass (SOG) design projects will feature both analog and digital blocks, such as […]
PCI Express is a point-to-point communications interface. It is neither an evolved nor enhanced form of PCI or PCI-X, but, essentially, a high speed, low voltage, differential serial pathway for communication between two devices, although it uses the same programming model as its predecessors. It employs a protocol that allows devices to communicate simultaneously by […]
The most expensive parts of today’s system-on-chip (SoC) design flow are where engineers must engage in direct manual effort or expend their energy making decisions. Unfortunately, far too much time and money are wasted on tasks that do not add value — such as trying to figure out if supposedly correct intellectual property (IP) is […]
The increased size and complexity of designs continues to push design and verification methodologies to progressively higher levels of abstraction. These upward shifts in abstraction tend to occur about every decade or so, and we are currently experiencing one in the shift from RTL to transaction-level modeling (TLM). Abstractions must eventually be converted back effectively […]
Up to 80% of the overall design cycle time can today be spent on verification. Constrained-random testing (CRT) was developed in response to greatly reduce the amount of code needed to create a verification environment. However, CRT-based methodologies that do not include functional coverage are analogous to shooting blind [1]. Functional coverage provides essential feedback […]
Putting together this latest edition of EDA Tech Forum was not unlike participating in chip design’s answer to Family Feud. A hundred design and semiconductor companies were asked what they considered the greatest challenge facing them today. And our survey said… ‘Verification’. Followed by ‘Mixed-Signal Verification’. Followed by ‘Debug’ with the caveat that they would […]
Introduction Complete system-on-chip (SoC) design assembly, configuration and verification environments emerged in the 1990s to address an increasing design gap between the capacity of silicon and the ability of engineering teams to fill that gap meaningfully with optimized system designs. Despite the need being addressed by these early environments, adoption was slow. In this context, […]
SystemC [1] is rapidly becoming the language of choice for ESL-centric design methodologies. It is set to become the framework for higher-level flows above today’s RTL, and has three key components: modeling, synthesis and verification. High-level modeling particularly demonstrates the language’s versatility and advantages. Strong progress is also being made in higher-level synthesis. However, our […]
Wilf Corrigan ‘Epitaxy innovator’, ‘ASIC champion’, ‘SIA founder’. Those are a few of the descriptions you could apply to Wilf Corrigan. Another, until May, was ‘Last of the Pioneers’ – but then, after 46 years of involvement with major chip companies, Corrigan stepped down as chairman of LSI Logic, the company he set up with […]
Processor program storage today Most of the microcontrollers currently on the market store program code in one of three ways: in ROM on the same chip as the MCU; in embedded flash memory on the same chip as the MCU; or as external flash memory whose contents are downloaded to the MCU. Each of these […]