Category Archives: EDA

Mixed-Signals: Tribulations of Combining Analog and Digital Design

Posted on September 25, 2012 by John Donovan

“Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.”—Rudyard Kipling Kipling’s line goes back over 100 years but today it could just as well apply to digital and analog engineers. Engineering graduates for at least … Continue reading →

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Verifying the Cloud

Posted on July 12, 2012 by John Donovan

So called “cloud computing” is the presumptive wave of the future, and not just to deliver software-as-a-service (SAAS), which will certainly challenge Microsoft’s business model. The ‘cloud’ is of course all those mainframes that Amazon, Google, Rackspace and others use … Continue reading →

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Low Power to the People!

Posted on May 30, 2012 by John Donovan

No, this isn’t another of Donovan’s rants, it’s a DAC Pavilion Panel on low-power design that I’ll be moderating on Monday morning. Here’s your chance to grill the gurus–well, three of them anyway–on numerous aspects of low-power design. It’s in … Continue reading →

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Trust and Verify

Posted on May 16, 2012 by John Donovan

While system-level design has been proceeding apace for many years—approaching the goal haltingly and asymptotically—system-level verification remains the Achilles heel of that enterprise. SoC design in particular increasingly consists of assembling IP from a variety of vendors, reusing some of … Continue reading →

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Mentor Graphics Acquires CodeSourcery

Posted on December 6, 2010 by John Donovan

December 2, 2010—Mentor Graphics has acquired most of the assets of CodeSourcery, the leading provider of open source GNU-based tool chains and services for advanced systems development. The acquisition builds on Mentor’s acquisition last year of Embedded Alley, whose runtime … Continue reading →

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For Energy Efficiency, Forget Accuracy

Posted on August 18, 2010 by John Donovan

U.C. Berkeley professor Jan Rabaey kicked off the 2010 International Symposium on Low-Power Electronics and Design (ISLPED) today in Austin with a challenge to programmers, hardware designers and their EDA tool providers: The deterministic Turing model has hit the power … Continue reading →

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Mentor Passes Cadence in EDA Market

Posted on July 20, 2010 by John Donovan

Gary Smith EDA have just released their 2009 Market Share study of the EDA market, compiled by analysts Nancy Wu & Mary Olsson. Synopsys continues to hold first place but for the first time Mentor Graphics managed to edge out Cadence … Continue reading →

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Synopsys Acquires Virage Logic

Posted on June 10, 2010 by John Donovan

By John Donovan—June 10, 2010 Synopsys announced this morning that it had signed a definitive agreement to buy Virage Logic for $315M in what looks to be a mutually beneficial transaction. Synopsys needed to expand its semiconductor IP (SIP)  IP … Continue reading →

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Need IP? Buy Me!

Posted on May 13, 2010 by John Donovan

Cadence announced today that it’s buying Denali Software for $315 million in cash. This is a pretty bold move for a company that was close to circling the drain not too long ago and raises the question, “What was that … Continue reading →

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Gary Smith (Informally) Launches DAC

Posted on July 27, 2009 by John Donovan

DAC traditionally begins on Sunday evening at the EDAC reception, where you can drink Merlot or Heineken and hear Gary Smith weigh in on the state of the industry. You then get a refill and start looking around for long-lost … Continue reading →

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