Following paper makes case of Dependence Flow Graph and how it can be used to implement a transformation algorithm with example for constant propagation algorithm.  Actually, Dependence Flow Graph can be used in High Level Synthesis too to perform various optimizations and to calculate cost associated with various tradeoffs.

Paper has made an interesting observation (as an analogy) about Arabic-Hindu numeral representation. By using Arabic-Hindu system, it is much easier to perform  complex arithmatic operations as against Roman numeral system. How true!

Interesting read @ Dependence Flow Graph

Good article on process node/design tradeoffs… (Especially for 90 nm onwards).

Faraday (one of the company mentioned in the article) has approx $140M IP revenue out of total of $175M... surprize!

The trend toward SoC is real," said Lee Chung, vice president of corporate marketing at UMC. "The feature-rich handsets and multimedia electronic devices so commonplace today are all SoC-enabled.

On one hand, there are consumer designs that have relatively mild performance requirements and quite small dice. These people can do a conservative design, get a very small die size and hence many more dice per wafer. Those economies of scale from 300-mm wafers — if the foundry chooses to pass them along — mean excellent cost."

The other category is at the opposite end: the 15-mm-on-a-side dice in high-end networking and other system-on-chip applications. "Here, the die shrink at 90 nm means lower chip area, and so lower defect-related yield loss," Rajendiran said.

But for designs in the middle, with dice 8 mm or 10 mm on a side, "these guys are kind of stuck," Rajendiran said. "The foundries really haven't articulated benefits that would apply to this group

Read Full Article @ UMC sees SoC driving 90 nm's growth

FPGA journal has good article on Innovation in EDA industry. First chapter shows work culture difference between a startup company and a big company. Notably, big companies have too many hurdles to foster innovation.

Innovation in a startup is drop-dead easy. In fact, it's almost impossible to avoid. Filled with energy, entrepreneurial spirit, and the promise of life-changing rewards, engineers unencumbered by corporate policy, practice, and red tape are capable of almost unbelievable creative productivity. Startups are the engines of technical innovation.

Innovation in large companies, on the other hand, is almost impossible to foster. The Chucks of the world have almost no tangible connection to the fate of their large corporation's business ventures, and they participate only tangentially in the rewards of its success. They tend to avoid taking the risks required for true innovation, because the costs of failure in a big corporation far outweigh the potential rewards of success.

Second chapter analyzes some of the big & successful EDA companies where spirit of innovation is still thriving.. especially note on Mentor Graphics in Chapter 2.

Mentor frequently fosters situations where multiple product development efforts take different approaches to attack the same market. "In our business," Rhines observes, "the cost of developing a new product is relatively small compared with the cost of broad distribution and marketing. We've learned to take advantage of that. In many large companies, there is always a drive for a single strategy and a single product to address a market need. New development is cut early if it doesn't fit the initial vision. The problem with that is that markets change, customer needs change, and the best solution may not be the one that appeared best in the early going. We decided to move the boundary. Instead of killing projects early, we let them continue and even test with a few customers. Then we get very tough. We don't go with broad distribution until the product is proven to be a success. Because of the cost difference, we could do five or ten projects to the prototype stage for each one we take all the way through to broad distribution."

Over all Good Read!! Links are provided below

Innovation Big and Small - Chapter 1

Innovation Big and Small - Chapter 2

After decades of growth through acquisition, Cadence Design Systems Inc’s new management has been making the rounds telling the press and Wall Street that it is moving away from a growth-by-acquisition business model and that its R&D group will now become the primary source of tool and product innovations. Maybe the company means that it will stop telling people it has acquired companies—at least that’s what its latest quarterly report indicates.

Read full article @  Cadence quietly buys DFM start-up