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By Rob van Blommestein, Head of Marketing, OneSpin: A Siemens Business
We’ve been talking for months about how to successfully verify designs to avoid security weaknesses and vulnerabilities. In the upcoming Osmosis (OneSpin Meeting on Solution, Innovation & Strategy) user group event, attendees will get to hear first-hand from one of our most ardent users how they were able to secure their…
By Rob van Blommestein, Head of Marketing, OneSpin: A Siemens Business
It’s happening. Some may have speculated that, with the acquisition of OneSpin by Siemens, the OneSpin user group meeting, more commonly known as Osmosis, would be formally (pun intended) absorbed into a larger Siemens event. Well, I’m here to tell you that Osmosis is officially on the books and will continue to focus on the…
By Rob van Blommestein, Head of Marketing at OneSpin: A Siemens Business
I’m sure you’ve heard the expression “The early bird gets the worm.” This proverb emphasizes the importance of starting something early to maximize the potential outcome. In terms of hardware security, this idiom is spot on. Cybersecurity shouldn’t only be about protecting the software from attacks. Hardware is just as…
By Rob van Blommestein, Head of Marketing for OneSpin: A Siemens Business
Integrated circuit designers are under constant pressure to deliver bug free code that meets evermore rigorous requirements. It is well known that the more bugs that can be detected early in the development process, the faster and easier that development effort will be. However, early bug detection requires a verification…
What do you want to protect? How will you protect it? What do you stand to lose if you don’t?
By McKenzie Ross, Director Corporate Marketing, OneSpin: A Siemens Business
Five years ago, I moved from Silicon Valley to Gig Harbor, Washington and bought a fixer-upper. As part of my ongoing (and extensive) home renovations, I just finished having the entire exterior redone: roof, siding, paint,…
We’re seeing an increase in the number of designs employing SystemC/C++. This isn’t surprising given the fact that specific use models have emerged to drive common design flows across engineering teams leading to the adoption of high-level synthesis (HLS) at many large semiconductor and electronic systems companies. These HLS tools are a popular method to rapidly generate…
We’re all familiar with the apps on our phones and how often they get updated. Most of the time, these updates are done over the air quickly and easily. Other times, a completely new download of the software is required. But let’s take a look at the hardware platforms that the software runs on. What happens when the hardware needs to be upgraded? Today’s hardware platforms are…
Recently, I was watching a documentary on the NASA Perseverance mission to Mars. I’ve always been fascinated by space travel and the engineering efforts to make it happen. We’ve all heard that the landing for this trip to Mars was the most precise in history, but what the documentary brought to light is the precision involved in each and every aspect of the Perseverance…
Security researchers have demonstrated extensively how cybersecurity attacks can have disastrous consequences in automobiles. A successful car hack in an automotive control system such as the drive train or brakes could affect an entire fleet of vehicles and put many lives in danger. Moreover, car owners' privacy and the protection of intellectual properties (IPs) and other assets…
Formal Equivalence Checking (EC) has become a standard part of the ASIC development flow, replacing almost all gate level simulation with a rigorous consistency check between pre- and post-synthesized code.
In the Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) space, EC is still a relatively new concept but is rapidly becoming important given the large devices being employed…
Many people are familiar with software vulnerabilities and the resulting need to frequently install patches and the latest releases of software tools and mobile apps.
Last month we talked about the SolarWinds hack and now this month another disturbing attack has taken place – this time on a water supply system in Florida.
The recent SolarWinds hacking incident that left many fortune-500 companies and US government networks exposed is an interesting cautionary tale for unchecked software and hardware supply chain security vulnerabilities.
RISC-V continues to make headlines across the electronic design industry. You may have seen the recent news that the OpenHW Group is delivering their first RISC-V core, the CV32E40P.
Addressing security-relevant hardware weaknesses is crucial to designing vulnerability-free IPs and chips. CWE™ is a useful resource. It has recently added support for common hardware security weaknesses.
If you ask most people, they would say that we’re living in an age of artificial intelligence (AI). But the reality is that we’re just getting started. The age of artificial intelligence is still in its infancy.
By Pre-silicon verification engineers assume that hardware interfaces must behave according to well-defined protocol rules. What happens when the rules are broken?
We all talk gibberish once in a while. At least, I do. I might be in a silly mood, thinking aloud, listening to music or talking over the phone using my headphones…
We’re six months into the pandemic, and it looks like in-person conferences are becoming a distant memory and that virtual conferences are now becoming routine. It used to be that traveling to a conference (sometimes long distances) was the only way to be able to attend technical presentations and learn about the latest technologies and methodologies,…
I love the summer holidays! Even more when I haven’t much of a plan and can enjoy a sense of freedom and adventure. A few years back, I went traveling with a campervan with a few friends, and we did exactly that. In fact, with the COVID-19 situation, traveling with a campervan is a great holiday option. The only problem is that I don’t quite enjoy…
As the 57th edition of the Design Automation Conference goes online, learning about the latest, most efficient IC integrity assurance solutions is easier than ever
By Rob van Blommestein, Head of Marketing at OneSpin
Every chip development team wants to find and fix all the bugs they possibly can in pre-silicon verification. Turning a chip to fix issues found in the bring-up lab incurs high costs and product delays; bugs found in the field are even more expensive to repair. But for some applications, including military/aerospace, implanted medical devices,…
As someone who is used to working from home, the recent global events haven’t had as much of an impact on my ability to keep productive. Our team at OneSpin is very adept with remote-working relationships as many of us reside all over the world. Having said this, we recognize that not everyone or every company shares in this situation.
By Sergio Marchese, Technical Marketing Manager at OneSpin
Modern integrated circuits (ICs) provide the computational and system control capabilities to process enormous amounts of data, make safety-critical decisions in real time, and protect sensitive data.
I’m writing these words in the time of a global health crisis. Sitting in an empty office, implementing social distancing theory, I realize that this time might be an unexpected but precious gift. A gift of time I did not have before. A time to think at a more global level. Time to go back and see daily routine from a different perspective.
The idea of free and open software has been around for decades and was grown out of a need to be able to easily enhance the software so it can do what you require of it. There was somewhat of an anti-establishment sentiment that advocated for open sharing over corporations controlling access of the software.
Open-source and third-party semiconductor IPs could contain undocumented, malicious logic. We challenged engineers everywhere to spot some hardware Trojans.
Raik Brinkmann, president and CEO of OneSpin Solutions, sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to talk about AI changes and challenges, new opportunities for using existing technology to improve AI, and vice versa. What follows are excerpts of that conversation.
Even more than most other high-tech companies, EDA vendors rely on their users for many aspects of their success. Of course, customers provide the revenue that fuels the business, but their influence goes far beyond that. Many features in EDA tools, and even entire categories of products, arise from working closely with advanced users. Even before…
I’m fascinated with cars, and there is a very famous car maker museum that I visited recently where they gave a thorough rundown of the history of each of their cars from how they are designed, to the materials they used, to the evolution of energy efficiency. It wasn’t until the last exhibit where they talked about the future of automobiles and how AI,…
Security used to be about system and software. As threats evolve, hardware engineers also have to familiarize themselves with the security vocabulary.
By Sergio Marchese, OneSpin Solutions
A significant portion of electronic system vulnerabilities involves hardware. In 2015 the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE-MITRE) database recorded 6,488 vulnerabilities. A considerable proportion…
Expectations for C++/SystemC Designs Must Be Set Properly
By Dominik Strasser, Vice President of Engineering
Not so long ago, some EDA vendors were painting a very attractive picture of chip design in the then-near future. The idea was that an architectural team would write a single description of the complete system in some high-level language, usually C/C++/SystemC, and that a new class of EDA…
SystemVerilog assertions can nicely capture many hardware requirements. However, more is needed for security verification.
By Sven Beyer and Sergio Marchese
Safety- and security-critical systems, such as connected autonomous vehicles, require high-integrity integrated circuits (ICs). Functional correctness and safety are necessary to establish IC integrity, but not sufficient. Security is…
Successful projects entail more than core compliance to the ISA.
By Nicolae Tusinschi, Product Specialist Design Verification, OneSpin
Last month, we discussed the growth of the RISC-V open processor ecosystem, the two main organizations driving it, and the role that OneSpin plays. In addition, we have become very active in the RISC-V community and have more than a dozen technical articles…
Industry initiatives are critical factors for processor family success.
Tom Anderson, Technical Marketing at OneSpin
Earlier this year, OneSpin’s Sven Beyer discussed the emerging RISC-V processor and some of its verification challenges. He stated that “RISC-V is hot and stands at the beginning of what may be a major shift in the industry.” In the few intervening months, it has become even more…
As the supply chain of components and IP expands, so too do the opportunities for adversarial tampering.
By John Hallman, Product Manager Trust & Security
For those around the microelectronic component industry for many years, we have seen quite a transformation of capability, sourcing of the supply chain, and now threats to these devices that drive the technology in our world today.
IC development steps are vulnerable to malicious insertions that may compromise system security.
By Sergio Marchese, Technical Marketing Manager
Electronic systems are at the core of an ever-increasing number of products and services. From power plants to automobiles, from medical devices to airplanes, from smartphones to home appliances, complex electronic systems enable an unprecedented level…
Most of my investments are associated with large changes in the semiconductor industry. These changes create opportunities for new and disruptive technologies. I also look to find solutions that provide a compelling reason to adopt a new technology or approach. When talking about a new approach, it often takes longer to overcome the status quo.
Can assertions enable engineers to design IP that is correct by construction?
By Sergio Marchese, Technical Marketing Manager
Time flies and the OneSpin’s Holiday Puzzle tradition has reached its third year. In December 2016, OneSpin challenged engineers everywhere to solve the Einstein riddle using assertions and a formal verification tool. In December 2017, the challenge was to model the harde…
By Sven Beyer, Product Manager Design Verification
RISC-V is hot and stands at the beginning of what may be a major shift in the industry. Even a cursory review of upcoming conferences programs and recent technical articles makes that clear. While it is still early in the evolution of the processor architecture, there is certainly the potential that RISC-V will be a game-changer in the IP and…
Formal verification has traditionally been regarded as an advanced technique for experts to thoroughly verify individual blocks of logic, or perhaps small clusters of blocks. However, if you talk to anyone involved in the field these days, you’ll find that the majority of formal users are running applications (“apps”) targeted for specific…
If there’s one thing certain in chip development, it’s that every innovation in architecture or semiconductor technology puts more pressure on the functional verification process. The increase in gate count for each new technology node stresses tool capacity. Every step up in complexity makes it harder to find deep, corner-case bugs. The dramatic growth in SoC…
Not so long ago, formal verification was considered an exotic technology used only by specialists for specific verification challenges such as cache coherency. As chips have grown ceaselessly in size and complexity, the traditional verification method of simulation could not keep pace. The task of generating and running enough tests consumed…
Formal verification, which uses mathematical analysis rather than simulation tests, has been available in commercial EDA tools for more than 20 years and in academia much longer. As with many new technologies, initial adoption was slow and limited to companies who had in-house formal experts. This has changed dramatically in the last dozen years or…
Most AI chips and hardware accelerators that power machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) applications include floating-point units (FPUs). Algorithms used in neural networks today are often based on operations that use multiplication and addition of floating-point values, which subsequently need to be scaled to different sizes and for…
My new, mid-size car is equipped with many advanced driver-assistance systems. To be honest, it’s taking me time to get used to some of them, as, for example, lane-centering assist that seamlessly takes control of my steering wheel. However, I cannot wait to get my hands off a fully autonomous vehicle and be able to take a nap while 7nm chips run…
Nowadays, most hardware development projects deploy functional verification flows that include UVM-based constrained-random testbenches and formal verification. High design complexity, tough budget constraints, and short time to market are the norm, not the exception. Advanced verification is a necessity for many engineering teams. In our…
As has been the case for at least 20 years, functional verification remains the bottleneck for semiconductor development. Many studies have shown that verification consumes 60-70% of a project’s time and resources. As more and more of the chip’s content comes from commercial intellectual property (IP) or reuse from previous generations, the ratio of…