This is the second part of my “Beyond RTL” series, where I examine alternatives to Register Transfer Level (RTL). The first part talks mostly about High-Level Synthesis, its genesis, and the state of the art of free and commercial tools that transform C/C++/SystemC to RTL. I highlighted the fundamental limitations that these
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Let’s say for a minute that you believe that it is finally time to drop RTL (maybe it was my previous post that convinced you). What can I say? I’m glad! You now have to pick among several competing technologies, each with its pros and cons, each of course claiming to be the best,
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The corner-based timing signoff approach is a historical and traditional method that has justified a development and enhancements of conventional STA tools and signoff flows. The number of signoff corners exponentially grows along with an increase of variation sources, their magnitude, and timing margins. It becomes a bottleneck in
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During the last decades, important advances in microelectronic techniques and technologies had been fueling the introduction of new wireless enabled products accessible to a large number of people around the world. Without the competitive price offered by CMOS, the widespread use of wireless enabled engineering complex devices, e.g. smartphones, tablets, etc. would certainly have been delayed.
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The corner-based timing signoff approach is a historical and traditional method that has justified a development and enhancements of conventional STA tools and signoff flows. The number of signoff corners exponentially grows along with an increase of variation sources, their magnitude, and timing margins. It becomes a bottleneck in the
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There has been a substantial amount of discussion about the noise of power supplies and its harmful effect inside wireless electronic devices such as cell phones and WiFi or bluetooth enabled portable devices. Due to an increased pressure to extend battery life in portable devices, switching (or DC-DC) regulators have
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