GSA Forum
David Fried, CTO, Coventor, Inc.

It is difficult to imagine what the world of IC design would be like without tools that allow engineers to model, simulate, optimize and “virtually” replicate the millions of gates and transistors that comprise a modern chip. Indeed, it would be literally impossible to design these types of devices without sophisticated automation tools, higher-level abstraction methodologies and extremely accurate simulation, modeling and checking technologies.

To manage ever-increasing complexity, the electronic design automation (EDA) infrastructure has evolved into a highly organized hierarchy. At the lowest level of abstraction, compact models and SPICE serve circuit designers with analytical tools to design small circuits with high precision. At higher levels of abstraction, VHDL, Verilog and synthesis tools allow larger more complex designs to be assembled in virtual space. Routing tools allow massive monolithic products to be wired and analyzed virtually, while essentially ignoring the details of lower levels of this hierarchy. With this advanced EDA infrastructure in place, the design community is now creating massive multi-core processors with embedded memories and advanced I/O capabilities.

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Coventor and its SEMulator 3D product was featured EE Times

EE Times
Coventor and its SEMulator 3D product was featured as one of the ten technologies that will change the world in 2013, according to EE Times.
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Electronic Engineering Journal
by Bryon Moyer

“I need a brush.”

What would you do given such instruction by someone to whom the response, “Can you be more specific, please?” would be considered inappropriate? It’s a hard request (or demand) to satisfy if you know absolutely nothing about his or her intent. It’s almost as bad as the “Bring me a rock” theory of management, except that that’s simply a way of ensuring that your employees are never quite sure if they’re doing the right thing, and so they remain nervous and stressed; putty in your hands. No, in this case, we’re just assuming poor communication skills, nothing Machiavellian.

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Electronic Engineering Journal
by Amelia Dalton

MEMS is everywhere. From your smartphone to your television to that gesture controlled game system that I didn’t get for Christmas. In honor of the Consumer Electronics Show taking place in Las Vegas next week, we’re talking about innovation in the MEMS marketplace. This week my first guests are Alissa Fitzgerald (AMFitzgerald) and Peter Himes (Silex). We’re gonna get down to brass tacks about MEMS and how you can get your next MEMS design up and running. Keeping with the MEMS theme, my second guest this week is Tom Flynn (Coventor). Tom and I talk about the tricky dance of EDA tools for MEMS designs. It’s complicated, but Tom will show you the steps.

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