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Imperas and Industry Articles

The design freedoms of RISC-V offer developers flexibility for innovation – now processor IP verification quality is also a flexible option.

The Lost Art of Processor Verification

 

The RISC-V open standard ISA (Instruction Set Architecture) offers developers the opportunity to configure the features and functions of a custom processor to uniquely address their target end application needs and requirements. RISC-V has a modular structure with…

Time spent in debug is unpredictable. It consumes a large portion of the development cycle and can disrupt schedules, but good practices can minimize it.

Semiconductor Engineering

 

Debug often has been labeled the curse of management and schedules. It is considered unpredictable and often can happen close to the end of the development cycle, or even after – leading to frantic attempts at work-arounds. And the problem is growing…

 

To read the full …

Automakers shifting to HPC chips for improved performance and lower system cost.

Semiconductor Engineering

 

Automotive architectures are evolving quickly from domain-based to zonal, leveraging the same kind of high-performance computing now found in data centers to make split-second decisions on the road.

This is the third major shift in automotive architectures in the past five years, and it’s one that centralizes processing using 7nm and 5nm technology, specialized accelerators,…

The EDA ecosystem is in the early stages of pivoting to the cloud, but not everything will move there.

Semiconductor Engineering

 

As EDA is moving to the cloud in fits and starts as tool vendors sort out complex financial models and tradeoffs while recognizing a potentially big new opportunity to provide unlimited processing capacity using a pay-as-you-go approach.

By all accounts, a tremendous amount of tire-kicking is happening now as EDA vendors and users delve…

Has simulation performance stagnated and what is the industry doing to correct it?

Semiconductor Engineering

 

 

Without functional simulation the semiconductor industry would not be where it is today, but some people in the industry contend it hasn’t received the attention and research it deserves, causing a stagnation in performance. Others disagree, noting that design sizes have increased by orders of magnitude while design times have shrunk, pointing to…

Demand for big-iron tools is insatiable as complexity continues to grow.

Semiconductor Engineering

 

As semiconductor complexity continues to escalate, so does the reliance on hardware-assisted simulation, emulation, and prototyping.
Since chip design first began, engineers have complained their design goals exceeded the capabilities of the tools. This is especially evident in verification and debug, which continue to dominate the design cycle. Big-iron…

Models enable automation and optimization, but today the need for new and more complex models is outstripping the ability to ratify and standardize those models?

Semiconductor Engineering

 

Models are critical for IC design. Without them, it’s impossible to perform analysis, which in turn limits optimizations.
Those optimizations are especially important as semiconductors become more heterogenous, more customized, and as they are integrated into larger systems…

EDA has been more successful creating open languages and standards rather than promoting open-source collaboration. Will this change?

Semiconductor Engineering

 

Experts at the Table: Semiconductor Engineering discussed what open source verification means today and what it should evolve into with Jean-Marie Brunet, senior director for the Emulation Division at Siemens EDA; Ashish Darbari, CEO of

Successful utilization of machine learning within EDA cannot happen without confidence in the quality of results. That presents challenges.

Semiconductor Engineering

 

Is EDA a suitable space for utilizing machine learning (ML)? The answer depends on a number of factors, including where exactly it is being applied, how much support there is from the industry, and whether there are demonstrable advantages.
Exactly where ML will play a role has yet to be decided…