D&R Industry Articles (May 2016)

Featured Article

Methodology to lower supply voltage of standard cell libraries

Standard cells libraries are usually designed to operate at a specific value of supply voltage referred to as “nominal voltage”. This article details the performance trade-offs in terms of power consumption and speed when decreasing power supply voltage, as well as a methodology to determine the lowest value to use.

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ATPG Challenges at Lower Technology Nodes

With regards to the ongoing trend of diminishing transistor geometries, we are witnessing a sharp increase in defect density along with significant on-chip process variations that affect transistor size, threshold voltage, and wire resistance.

Featured Article

Security Considerations For Bluetooth Smart Devices

Bluetooth Smart is an emerging short range wireless technology aimed for low power devices. Bluetooth 4.2 core specification provides various methods to secure the communication between devices and establish trusted connections. This paper describes the design considerations to secure the Bluetooth smart devices.

Featured Article

Schedule Based Verification

In these highly competent times, the need of the hour is to provide a step higher than just a functionally verified IP. A functionally verified IP is great to begin with, but clubbing it with features such as to maximize system performance and minimize the power utilization is an absolute necessity.