DFT Digest

You are browsing the archives of Mixed-Signal DFT.

It may take me a couple of weeks to crawl through what I saw and heard in my 3-4 days at ITC this year – many of the articles written by the trade press have already (I’ll be linking to them as I see them). Likely by next week, you won’t see any more ITC stories. But you will here – DFT Digest – the gift that keeps on giving? he he… well one thing for sure, your not likely to find any personalized accounts in those stories as you will in mine. That’s what makes blogging fun!

Q: So what do steak, jugglers and analog fault models have in common?

Remember in my last post, where I told you how weird it was to suddenly be seeing all these references to 3D ID design technology? Well it didn’t stop. Literally, the day I posted that entry, I got the new issue of IEEE Design & Test – a special issue on, you guessed it: 3D IC Design and Test.

The same day, I was cleaning my desk, and found a couple of papers that I had printed out a couple of months ago and forgot about, from DATE ‘09. One was entitled Test Architecture and Optimization for Three-Dimensional SoC’s.

It feels good to be right… it does happen sometimes. Back in May, when Mentor Graphics announced its intentions to acquire LogicVision, most folks writing about the deal pointed out a significant overlap in the product offerings of the two companies – surely the move didn’t make much sense (but to be fair, none of them know much about the DFT market). I first blogged the news here, and again here, in response to the overlap arguments. My feeling was that LogicVision brought strengths in some product areas where Mentor was flagging. And, I was right.

Need to catch up on a few things… with the onset of the DAC season, there are always some interesting things that pop up, even if the conference is light on test. Here is a small list of items that have passed into my weary view, in no particular order:

image: Al Souza, Potpourri Redux, 2007

DATE (Design, Automation & Test in Europe) 2009 started today. Is there someone out there that reads this blog that would like to report their DATE experience back to the world? If so, please let me know – I’ll give you a forum!