PCI Express Architecture and Applications for FPGAs by Kiran Puranik

PCI Express

This is a PuneChips event, a forum for Pune people interested in semiconductors design/apps/EDA

What: A Talk on PCI Express Architecture and Applications for FPGAs by Kiran Puranik
When: July 30, 2011 from 10:30 am to 12:00 noon
Where: Venture Center, NCL Innovation Park, Pashan Road

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Building an Autonomous and Scalable Semiconductor VLSI Business by Dr. T.R. Ramachandran

LED Sign Board
Creative Commons License photo credit: Patrick Hoesly

Dr. Ramachandran also presented this at the 2011 VLSI conference. They have posted it online.

Click here to download the PDF.

This event is jointly brought to you by PuneChips and LSI Corporation.

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India Needs Angels not Fabs to Foster Semiconductor Growth

Pentium-4/3.0GHz
Creative Commons License photo credit: yellowcloud

It has been well over twenty five years since Texas Instruments first set up shop in Bangalore. Other global semiconductor vendors have since made Bangalore, and more recently NOIDA, Hyderabad, Pune and Chennai into huge R&D hubs that develop products for global consumption. Indian engineers are now designing latest chips and systems using cutting edge technologies.  However, not a single Indian chip company has emerged onto the global scene given all this teeming talent. This in itself is surprising, as the low cost Indian environment should make hi-tech businesses thrive. It is said that a semiconductor startup in the Silicon Valley has to raise funds in the range of of US $50m – $60m to be successful. With India’s lower costs of engineering resources, this number could be cut by half or a third, and make life much more simple for the VC as well as the entrepreneur. However, we don’t really see this happening. Why? Probably because India lacks the advanced angel investor culture that focusses on funding and advising hi-technology startups.

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Electronics Packaging Presentation now available

Sandeep Sane has shared his presentation with PuneChips. Please download here: Electronics [...]

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Chip Design Verification: Test-plan/Coverage Plan

wafer - 1
Creative Commons License photo credit: oskay 

This is the second in the blog series titled Field Manual for Verification Planning written for PuneChips by Suhas Belgal . The blogs deal with functional verification of digital ICs and cover mostly the pre-silicon verification phase.  

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Introduction to Chip Verification Planning

Suhas Belgal

This is the first in a series of blogs written for PuneChips by Suhas Belgal titled Field Manual for Verification Planning. The blogs deal with functional verification of digital ICs and cover mostly the pre-silicon verification phase.     

Continue reading Introduction to Chip Verification Planning

SystemVerilog and Designer Productivity

The most recent PuneChips event was easily the most successful one in the short history of the group. Over 50 engineers attended the “SystemVerilog” talk by Clifford Cummings (See Cliff’s Linked-in profile here), President of Sunburst Design and SystemVerilog industry guru. A big thank you to a few folks who made this possible is in order; first off Parag Mehta of Qlogic for connecting us with Cliff; secondly in addition to Parag, Pravin Desale and Deepak Lala of LSI, and Jagdish Doma of Virage Logic for driving the attendance. Last, but not the least, we must also thank Cliff for taking us through a complex topic in a very engaging manner. Cliff certainly held the audience in rapt attention through an hour of highly technical discussion. The Q&A session was also very engaging. Of course, Cliff being the industry celebrity that he is, was mobbed by engineers asking questions after his speech. 

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New Techniques in ASIC Verification

(This is a guest post for PuneTech by Arati Halbe, who has close to 9 years experience in ASIC front end design and verification. She is a PuneChips member.)

As the complexity of Integrated Circuits (specifically ASIC and SoC) increases, and as their sizes keep reducing, the task of testing the chip gets more and more challenging. Engineers need to come up with better and different methodologies to ensure what goes to the factory for manufacturing is actually what they intended to deliver. Verification occurs at various stages in the ASIC development cycle. How much is enough at each stage is a problem that needs to be addressed on a case to case basis. A sound knowledge of various techniques and awareness of capabilities and limitations of each technique goes a long way in making decisions about when, where and what.

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How Green will be My Valley?

(This is a guest blog by Chaitanya Rajguru, Associate Technical Fellow at KPIT Cummins, and a member of the PuneChips group.)

The “greening” of all things commercial and industrial is all around us. Every industry from transportation to technology to power to finance is in a rush to be perceived as “green”. So should the EDA industry stay behind? I think not. And here are my thoughts on some possible scenarios on what may happen.

So where does one begin? One good starting point may be with a popular indicator used to gauge the “goodness” of EDA tool’s output: “Quality of Results”, or QoR. QoR is used as a higher-level indicator of process quality, much like a Customer Satisfaction Index that up-levels feedback on specific aspects such as timely delivery and responsiveness. IC design EDA tools have used to showcase what they can do. So is it possible to expand its scope to include “greenness” as well? Or is it just an attempt to paint a turkey blue and pass it off as a peacock?

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Chip Design for Telecom

First, an update on PuneChips – we now have 5465 members in the Linked In group and over 40 in the Google Groups mailing list. Some folks doing applications work have also joined us. Given that there are 300 or so semiconductor designers in the Pune area, and hundreds more developing applications, we have ways to go. 

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