Blog Review: Oct. 8
By Ed Sperling
Synopsys’ Navraj Nandra poses a very interesting question: Can high k/metal gate survive in the 28nm low-power race. That all depends on who you ask. The answer might not be the same for Intel as a fabless company working off restrictive design rules. Nevertheless, this blog is worth a read.
The issue of reliability has been a topic of serious discussion for months as we push toward 32/28nm. Tradeoffs in power, performance, area and the sheer complexity of increased density and manufacturability have raised red flags everywhere among designers. Now comes the real-world example. Check out what happened when Cisco’s Ramanathan Sambamurthy and his associates used an environment for constrained verification to apply a stress test.
What exactly is software simulation? It sounds clear-cut enough, but Mentor’s Colin Walls proves otherwise. It’s an interesting look at how differently embedded software engineers see the world from their brethren on the hardware side. It’s no wonder they don’t share tables in the cafeteria. Question: ‘Is this seat taken?’ Answer: ‘In some respects yes, in others, no.’
Cadence’s Jason Andrews takes a look at the memory intensiveness of debugging and why it matters in system-level design. It may be intrusive, but it’s certainly not intuitive.
The United States celebrated World Standards Day yesterday—a week ahead of the real birthday of ISO. So much for standards. Did they not notice the calendar, or was something else happening next week? Check out Karen Bartleson’s column for why this is a big deal, anyway.
If you can follow Frank Schirrmeister’s moving chart you get the rapid eye movement award. You’ll get the general idea, and the blog is quite interesting, but don’t stare at that graphic too long. Hint: Click quickly and it will open up something you can actually read.
What can you do with USB 3.0. Synopsys’ Eric Huang posed that question. There’s no right answer, but it does at least inspire some interesting guesses.
Tags: Cadence, Cisco, Mentor Graphics, Synopsys