D&R Industry Articles (August 2011)

Featured Article

Breaking the Language Barriers: Using Coverage Driven Verification to Improve the Quality of IP

This paper presents two unique solutions for facilitating functional coverage in VHDL and SystemC. One approach is to use post-simulation Value Change Dump (VCD) files to calculate functional coverage. The other approach, which is applicable only to SystemC, proposes extending the SystemC Verification Library (SCV) to facilitate functional coverage calculation.

Featured Article

Ultra Low Jitter Wide Band LC PLL

The accelerating need for ever higher data rates and serial I/O density sets demanding performance requirements for current and next generation SerDes transceivers. The PLL is the key to determining high speed link capabilities, since high quality clocks are required to meet bit error rate (BER) specifications of 10-12 to 10-15. An ultra-low jitter wideband LC PLL has been developed to meet the exacting requirements of today's systems.

Featured Article

Distributed Video Coding (DVC): Challenges in Implementation and Practical Usage

Distributed Video Coding (DVC) is a new coding paradigm for video compression. This paper highlights gaps and challenges in implementation of DVC and its practical usage.

Featured Article

The Importance of True Randomness in Cryptography

Creating Random Numbers is hard. Especially if all you have available to do it, is digital hardware and deterministic software. Where is the randomness in that? Both are designed to behave predictably, each time, every time. Therefore, hardware and software designers, trying to find unpredictability, have to look outside of their normal operating environment to find it.

Featured Article

Interconnect Solutions for 40G/100G Systems

One of the key challenges with supporting 40G/100G links is that the SerDes must not only support emerging standards such as XLAUI (40G Ethernet) and CAUI (100G Ethernet) but must continue to support current and legacy interfaces such as 1Gbps Ethernet (SGMII) and 10Gbps Ethernet (XAUI). Multi-protocol support is essential to managing the transition to higher data rates while still supporting legacy standards.