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Debugging Analog Mixed Signal Circuits

All levels of IC design have been impacted by increasing pressure on production costs and time to market. In this situation, one of the major challenges is to avoid silicon failure or yield loss. A widely accepted statistic today is that almost half of all designs fail at first silicon. Failure costs include new mask generations, additional engineering time, and the potential miss of a large part of the market window for a product.

Software and the Art of Business Unusual

The semiconductor industry has been slowed by the current economic crisis. According to Gartner, worldwide semiconductor revenue growth in 2009 is expected to be 1%, down by approximately 7 percentage points from previous estimates. Even with the very weak economic environment, semiconductor growth was surprisingly strong until recently. However, the industry is changing this quarter. According to Gartner, there is strong evidence to suggest that the semiconductor industry will see negative growth starting in the fourth quarter of 2008, and that this will continue throughout most of 2009.

Rapid Prototyping in a Collaborative Environment

Large organizations often struggle with innovation. Developing prototypes in either hardware or software often needs to bring together design teams and system architects who can be spread out across the world, and making this a fast and efficient process can be a struggle. Now software configuration management (SCM) tools are being used to speed up the prototyping process dramatically.