Great article on Statistical STA

EETimes.com - Practical Applications of Statistical Static Timing Analysis is a great article on statistical timing analysis! Quite in-depth and comprehensive for a two-page article.

Interesting that the authors are from Cadence. I didn't know they were big players in the STA arena. I know they have an "Encounter" timing system, but I'm not familiar with how advanced or accepted it is.

The article reinforces my view that statistical STA is "not ready for PrimeTime". That pun is not a slam against Synopsys! I mean that there needs to be a lot more support from the foundries and understanding by the design community before there's much adoption of SSTA for production chip timing.

Another good article, which was just published and is written by Extreme DA's founder, is Statistical static timing analysis: A view from the future.

The EDA Dozen (Startups to Watch)

We need more excitement in the EDA industry after the layoffs of analysts and journalists following the field. Here's a start. The EDA Dozen lists that the top start-ups as anointed by EE Times.

For some of these, I'm very familiar and interested in what they're doing. For others, I can hardly understand how their technology works and how likely it is to catch on. I'll let you determine the What's Hot and What's Not for yourselves, but this list can get it started.