EW - Design Edition - Cadence SoC Verification, Hitachi 3D Production Platform & More

Cadence SoC Verification for Arm-Based Servers

(Image courtesy of Cadence.)

Cadence has announced early access to the Cadence Xcelium Parallel Logic Simulation on Arm-based servers. Prior to manufacturing, verifying that SoC designs function correctly is a task that accounts for over 70 percent of the EDA compute workload. The Xcelium simulation runs natively on Arm-based servers and is designed to provide power and capacity benefits, executing both high-throughput and long-latency workloads to reduce overall SoC verification time and costs.

Xcelium improves runtime through optimized single-core and multi-core simulation. It provides up to 2x speedup for single-core, and 3x to 10x speedup for multi-core simulation tasks compared to previous simulators, reducing long-latency SoC tests and shortening overall time to market. Running the Xcelium simulator on Arm-based servers allows systems and semiconductor companies to best utilize the available cores within those servers to achieve the verification that advanced-node designs require. Additionally, the simulator provides automatic partitioning of design and verification testbench codes for fast execution on multi-core servers.

Additional technical specifications are available on Cadence’s website.

Hitachi Automatic Production Schedules and Instructions

(Image courtesy of Hitachi.)

Hitachi has announced that as of November of 2017, the company will launch the “factory simulator” to automatically generate optimized production schedules for entire factories, and the “assembly navigation system” to automatically generate 3D work instructions based on 3D CAD data. These systems are made possible by using the IoT to link a large variety of information.

The Assembly Navigation System automatically converts completed pieces of 3D CAD data created during the design phase into 3D work instructions, which allows the manufacturing floor’s workers to gain an intuitive understanding of the information. The IoT platform “Lumada,” which is the basis of these systems, utilizes OSS. Lumada also provides functions ranging from “Pentaho” (which enables the integration, visualization and analysis of various types of data) to functions that are open and secure.

For more information, visit Hitachi’s website.

NI Data Management Software Suite

(Image courtesy of NI Data Manage.)

National Instruments (NI) has released the Data Management Software Suite. This enterprise software offers a workflow to standardize measurement data across teams, mine that data for useful information, transform the data through automated analysis and deliver reports.

“The amount of data being acquired to test devices, monitor physical assets and analyze product designs continues to skyrocket,” said Dave Wilson, vice president of platform software at NI. “The challenge with the exponential growth in the amount of data being acquired is the establishment of a repeatable and automated process to extract valuable insights. Often inconsistencies and errors in the data produce erroneous results, which requires engineers to manually inspect and verify data before sending it to a manual or automated analysis process.”

The Data Management Suite is supported by an ecosystem of partners, add-on IP and applications engineers, and is part of NI’s software and hardware platform that aims to lower the cost of test, reduce time to market and future-proof test systems.

For more information, visit NI’s website.

XJTAG Electronics Test Development

(Image courtesy of XJTAG.)

aXJTAG has launched version 3.6 of its electronics test development software XJDeveloper. XJDeveloper is a development and debug environment that makes it easy to set up and run JTAG tests, detecting faults on high-density boards without costly test fixtures or functional testing. Version 3.6 includes several productivity and automation-focused enhancements, allowing engineers to setup tests for complex boards in significantly less time.

Version 3.6 also incorporates a documentation feature in XJEase files so that users can label methods in the XJEase file which can be allocated to testing specific saved devices. These labels are used by the “automatic test list creation” feature to further accelerate test setup.

Information concerning pricing and availability can be found on XJTAG’s website.

Zuken Study Raises Doubts about the Sustainability of PLM Systems

(Image courtesy of Zuken.)

A report commissioned by Zuken titled “Design Data Management in Electrical and Electronic Engineering” has revealed that more than 50 percent of electrical and electronic engineering product designers say PLM systems have limited suitability for their specific requirements.

One of the main reasons for these findings is insufficient management of design data and component libraries. However, PLM systems are not seen as the ultimate solution for managing these issues and winning back time, with 52 percent of those using PLM systems to manage electrical and electronic engineering data rating their systems as being suitable, but with limitations. When questioned further, 77 percent of respondents did not believe that a PLM system would help them work more productively.

Key Results from the survey of electrical and electronic engineering product designers:

52 percent have doubts about the suitability of current PLM environments for their specific requirements.
39 percent need to better coordinate mechanical and electronic engineering activities.
52 percent cited growing product complexity as their greatest challenge.
45 percent see a need to implement end-to-end digital processes from sales to engineering and production.

Solutions for effective engineering data management could support engineers in their day-to-day work by making processes more effective and allowing them to focus more on their core activities.

To read the report in its entirety, visit Zuken’s website.

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