Front-End VLSI: Market Demands and Career Insights

  Boosting SoC Design Productivity with IP-XACT Categories: Accellera, Semiconductor Services Modern System-on-Chip (SoC) designs are composed of hundreds of IP blocks—CPUs, accelerators, NoCs, peripherals, and mixed-signal components—all of which must seamlessly integrate. As complexity accelerates, so does the potential for miscommunication, integration errors, and manual bottlenecks. IP-XACT (IEEE 1685) has emerged as one of the most effective solutions to unify, automate, and scale SoC design. This blog explores what IP-XACT is, why it matters, and how the latest enhancements enable productivity gains across semiconductor teams. What Is IP-XACT? IP-XACT is a standardized, machine-readable XML schema that describes semiconductor intellectual property (IP) blocks and system-level assemblies. The format captures: Interfaces, ports, and bus definitions Memory maps and register specifications Structural hierarchy and parameters Configuration metadata and design vi...

FPGA Prototyping in Practice: Addressing Peripheral Connectivity Challenges Categories: EDA, Emulation, Prototyping. Key Takeaways Modern chip verification struggles with peripheral connectivity due to major differences in operating frequencies. Speed adaptors bridge systems running at different speeds, enabling real-world transaction-level verification. PCIe, HDMI, and memory models are three major use-cases where speed adaptors solve prototyping challenges. S2C provides a comprehensive range of speed adaptors, memory models, and daughter cards for high-speed interface support. With 20+ years of expertise, S2C continues to advance FPGA prototyping technology, reducing verification cycles and accelerating time-to-market. Introduction Modern chip design verification is becoming increasingly complex. One of the biggest challenges is connecting real-world peripherals to FPGA prototypes or emulation platforms. User designs often run at tens of megahertz—or in some cases e...

  CDC Verification for Safety-Critical Designs: What You Need to Know Clock Domain Crossing (CDC) verification has become one of the most critical elements in modern chip design—especially when the chip is destined for safety-critical applications like avionics. A single CDC-related failure in silicon can lead to unpredictable behavior, costly re-spins, and in the worst cases, catastrophic system failures. In this article, we break down the key concepts from a recent Siemens EDA white paper on CDC verification for airborne hardware and highlight what engineers must know to meet the strict design assurance requirements of DO-254. Why Verification Matters More Than Ever In every chip project: Re-spins increase cost and delay time-to-market Bugs in silicon damage brand trust and revenue In safety-critical fields (like aerospace), failure isn’t an option For avionics hardware, the consequences of intermittent or undetected bugs are severe. This is why design teams must ...

 AI RTL Generation vs. AI RTL Verification Categories: AI | Bronco AI | ChipAgents AI | EDA  Key Takeaways 50%+ of IC/ASIC project time is spent on verification , often requiring as many verification engineers as designers. AI-generated RTL acceptance rate is ~25% , indicating early but imperfect progress in AI-driven design generation. Debugging consumes ~47% of verification effort , offering a major opportunity for AI and agentic systems to improve triage and root-cause analysis. Introduction Automated RTL generation has captured headlines with the dream of designing chips through natural language prompts — a vision where anyone can create hardware just by describing it. While this idea is exciting and media-friendly, the current realities of semiconductor design suggest that AI-assisted verification holds far greater near-term potential. Verification may not sound as glamorous as design, but when it comes to return on investment (ROI) and engineering ef...