April 12, 2007 -- In the nanometer era, several stages of the design process require a time-consuming validation process. However, the time-to-market window is continuously shrinking in this highly competitive environment. To complicate this problem further, designing and manufacturing in the latest nanometer process nodes are so costly that first-pass-silicon is a requirement. The interesting question that emerges is whether the evolving computing industry (which benefited from the processing power of the semiconductor industry) can feed forward in the electronic design industry to help the cause. In this article, we will discuss the existing paradigms in efficient computing and distributed processing and how design and EDA technologies can benefit from that.

By Dr. Raja Mitra. (Mitra is a Senior Engineering Manager at Cadence Design Systems, Inc.)