From the Editor

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Are we about to enter a world of weird effects in silicon? Or will silicon even survive? (Yes, we have heard that question before.) At the summer forecast meeting of analyst company Future Horizons, Europe Editor Dick Selwood heard about some of the different approaches to continuing to cram more and more transistors into a chip.

In addition, Mentor takes a look at how DRC and DFM checks break down below 28nm when done in the traditional design-then-verify flow, giving us their view on a better way to work.

We've extended the deadline for the final Journal Forum Posting competitionPost something creative and you could walk away with the final $500 amazon.com gift certificate! 

Thanks as always for reading. We encourage you to share your thoughts in the new easier-to-use comments area right below the articles; don't be shy. Or you can get a lively discussion going on our new FORUMS.

Bryon Moyer - Editor, IC Journal

 


Industry News

September 02, 2010

Agilent Technologies’ New LTE Base-Station Emulator Speeds Development and Verification of LTE User Equipment

EDA Solutions and Europractice host mixed-signal ASIC design training course

Energy Micro tool instantly resolves MCU pin conflicts

September 01, 2010

C-to-FPGA Integration Accelerates Prototyping 10X

Magma Delivers Hierarchical Reference Flow for the Common Platform alliance’s 32/28-nm Low-Power Process Technology

August 31, 2010

EMA TimingDesigner 9.25 Automates Static Timing Analysis Process

Technical Education on Digital Signal Processing, FPGAs and Embedded Processors

HDL Works Presents 'IO Checker 2.0'

August 30, 2010

SoCIP Road Shows to Stop at Shenzhen, Chengdu and Xi’an

S2C Announces Virtex-6 Based 4th Generation Rapid SoC Prototyping Solution

August 26, 2010

CML Launch New Enhanced Audio Scrambler and Sub-Audio Signalling Processor IC

Mentor Graphics Collaborates with GLOBALFOUNDRIES to Provide Easier Debugging Capability to IC Designers

August 25, 2010

Synopsys DesignWare SATA IP Enables First-Pass Silicon Success for Global Unichip Corporation

Agilent Technologies’ SAS Compliance Test Software Provides Automated 6-Gbps and 12-Gbps Measurements for Oscilloscopes

STARC, Calypto and Virage Logic Break New Ground with Industry’s Lowest Power Design Flow

Feature Articles

Science Fiction or Black Art?

by Dick Selwood

Once upon a time, and a long time ago it was, a company in what was struggling to be known as Silicon Valley (Germanium Gulch never really caught on) had an order for a discontinued product. The customer was pressing, so the company ran a batch of wafers (probably one-inch wafers), but none of the end product worked. A second batch was also DoA. After a great deal of head-scratching, someone remembered that since the last successful production run, clean room staff had started wearing gloves. A third batch went through the line without gloves, and there was enough working product to meet the customer’s needs. One possible explanation was that sodium chloride emitted by the operators’ hands (even though wafers were handled with tweezers) created just enough doping at some stage to tip the process into yielding.

In those days, process development was one part technology and several parts black art. Things are different today, of course. But, if Future Horizons’ CTO, Mike Bryant, is correct, we may be going into even more weird realms of the unknown anytime soon.  Read More

DRC/DFM Signoff During Physical Design Provides Faster Time to Closure

by Ivailo Nedelchev and Alexander Volkov, Mentor Graphics Corporation


When Things Look Suspicious

ASIC Analytic Looks for Anomalies in the EDIF File

by Bryon Moyer

Keeping Things Safe for Work

MethodICs Introduces ProjectIC for Enterprise Project Data Management

by Bryon Moyer

Passing the Test

Vennsa Tries to Figure Out Who Screwed Up

by Bryon Moyer

Power vs. Thermal

Docea Makes the Peace

by Bryon Moyer

Flexible Friends

by Dick Selwood


Faster than Reality

by Bryon Moyer


Extracting a Life

by Bryon Moyer


Retrograde Cycloid

From Vertical to Horizontal to Vertical

by Bryon Moyer


What's next? Or is anything next?

This week Dick explored some of the alternatives that might replace silicon as The End Of The World approaches. Again. So... what do you think the next thing is? Silicon redux? So...
Posted on 09/01/10 at 7:25 PM
by: bmoyer

Do you think about EDIF files?

This week we looked at a new verification offering that focuses on the EDIF file, post-synthesis. Is the EDIF file something you pay attention to and deal with explicitly, or has it become ...
Posted on 08/24/10 at 6:23 PM
by: bmoyer

Is one corporate project management entity feasible?

We recently looked at a new offering that takes design management one step further, to try to manage projects at the enterprise level.

While this sounds good, do you realistically s...
Posted on 08/24/10 at 6:21 PM
by: bmoyer

While UVM set OVM as its base, s

While UVM set OVM as its base, several new features are promised as additions. It is understandable that people will wait to see the impact of those additions.

For those who are not members of the Accellera VIP-TSC group standardizing UVM, you can g...
Posted on 08/20/10 at 4:01 PM
by: dennisb

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