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EDA success

Cadence Design Systems (www.cadence.com) announced that Kaben Wireless Silicon (www.kabenwireless.com), a leading provider of RFIC semiconductor IP for next-generation wireless communication has achieved dramatic performance boosts while running top-level simulations using Cadence Virtuoso Accelerated Parallel Simulator (APS). Kaben claims that they actually achieved a 7.6-times performance boost with four threads over the baseline Spice simulator on a prelayout PLL design with fewer than 5,000 devices. In the case of a post-layout PLL design with 328,000 devices dominated by parasitics, the Virtuoso Accelerated Parallel Simulator ran the complete simulation without reducing the design netlist in four days with full Spice accuracy compared to a previous solution where they were not even able to run the simulation.

More reasons to attend DAC

If you are attending DAC this year at the Moscone Center in San Francisco held July 26-31, 2009 you might want to check out the following conferences, which are also held during that time.

Starting on Saturday, July 25, through Monday, July 27, the International Conference on Microelectronic Systems Education (www.mseconference.org) provides an opportunity for educators and industry to work together to ensure continued excellence in the field of microelectronic systems. Also starting on Saturday, the NSF-SRC-SIGDA-DAC Design Automation Summer School (ziyang.eecs.umich.edu/~dickrp/dass09) features lectures by experts in the field targeting an audience of graduate students or professionals interested in getting up to speed on various topics in EDA.

Starting on Monday, July 27, through Tuesday, July 28, the 7th IEEE Symposium on Application Specific Processors (SASP) (www.sasp-conference.org/) explores (micro)architectural design approaches, trade-offs and compiler technologies, for both domain-specific and customizable embedded processors.

Scheduled Wednesday, July 29 through Saturday, August 1, the NASA/ESA Conference on Adaptive Hardware and Systems (AHS 2009) (www.see.ed.ac.uk/~ahs2009/) brings together leading researchers from the adaptive hardware and systems community to exchange experiences and share new ideas in the field.