EDA Glossary of Terms

Analog

Electronic signals based on a variable (wave) that move up and down continuously and are found in products such as analog radios and clocks. Analog products are not as common as digital because the mathematical description is more complex, as opposed to digital signals that consist of either ON or OFF.

ASIC

Application-Specific Integrated Circuit. A kind of integrated circuit, often referred to as "gate-array" or "standard-cell" products, developed and designed to satisfy one customer's specific application requirement, such as a pager.

CAD/CAM

Computer-Aided Design/Computer-Aided Manufacturing. In the early stages of the EDA industry, workstation automation companies referred to these in the same breath. But, as tools became more specialized and sophisticated, they were separated and a new division -- Computer-Aided Engineering (CAE) -- was added. CAD is the hardware and software tools used by engineers to design and verify new electronic systems.

Chip

Another term for an integrated circuit, microchip or semiconductor.

Component

One element of a larger system. A hardware component can be a device as small as a transistor or as large as a disk drive as long as it is part of a larger system. Software components are segments within a larger system.

Design Flow

The process of a chip design from concept to production.

Design for Reuse

The methodology or series of steps behind reusing building blocks of information (also know as IP cores) in a chip design.

Design Reuse

The ability to retarget previously designed building blocks or "cores" of information (also known as IP cores) on a chip for a new design as a means of increasing time to market.

Digital

Electronic signals or switches based on discrete, binary electrical levels (ones and zeros) found in such products as touch-tone telephones and audio compact disk players. These signals are either ON or OFF, HIGH or LOW, YES or NO. The mathematical description in digital products is simple, since it is either ON or OFF. Therefore, most electronic products found today are digital, rather than analog.

DSP

Digital Signal Processor. DSP chips are widely used in sound cards, fax machines, modems, cellular phones, high-capacity hard disks and digital TVs. The first DSP chip used in a commercial product was believed to be from Texas Instruments, which was used in its very popular Speak & Spell game in the late 1970s. DSP chips are used in sound cards for recording and playback and speech synthesis. Other audio uses are amplifiers that simulate concert halls and surround-sound effects for music and home theater.

EDA

Electronic Design Automation. The successor to CAE, refers to software tools used by general or specialized designers of chips.

Emulation

The process by which a device is built to work like another. For example, a chip can be designed to emulate another model and execute software that was written to run in the other design. The emulator can be hardware, software or both.

FPGA

Field-Programmable Gate Array. An FPGA is a specially made digital semiconductor often used for prototyping. With an FPGA, a design engineer is able to program electrical connections on site for a specific application (for example a device for a sound/video card), without paying thousands of dollars to have the chip manufactured in mass quantities.

Gate

An electrical switch that is the most basic logic element in a chip. Millions of these gates or "switches" can be found on a single chip.

HDL

Hardware Description Language. Designers use HDL to describe what a semiconductor will do through a particular language. HDL allows designers to write the necessary specifications for their chip design. The two main HDL languages used today are Verilog and VHDL.

IC

Integrated Circuit (Also semiconductor or chip). A semiconductor containing many electronic circuits. ICs are the major building blocks of electronic systems, such as cellular phones, pagers and personal computers.

Implementation

The carrying out or physical realization of something from concept to design. For example, a computer system implementation would be the installation of new hardware and system software.

IP

Intellectual Property. A broad category of materials that are legally recognized as proprietary to an organization. In the electronics field, IP refers to specific portions of a chip or "building blocks" that can be proprietary and/or patented designs of a particular company. These IP "blocks" or cores can then be sold to customers as commodity parts for new designs.

Layout

The process of planning and implementing the location of IC devices within a chip design.

Logic

The sequence of functions performed by hardware or software. Hardware logic is made up of circuits that perform an operation. Software logic is the sequence of instructions in a program.

Modeling

Duplicating certain functions of a chip to ensure that they operate properly.

Optimization

Using the computer to achieve the most efficient design of a product. In the past, design engineers performed a combination of manual and automated methods to accomplish design optimization. They used EDA tools, determined what components needed work and then redrew the object manually. Today, EDA software tightly integrated with the design program can perform the analysis and automatically redraw the object.

Place and Route

Place and route places the switches on a chip design on a "blueprint" and routes them together, so the gates go where they are supposed to go. These gates are connected with metal wires.

Semiconductor

(Also "microchip," "chip," "integrated circuit" or "IC"). Components that provide the memory, logic and virtually all other intelligence functions in today's electronic systems.

Silicon

The most commonly used element in semiconductors due to its abundance (the same element that is found in sand) and ease of processing. Chips are made by growing silicon into a giant crystal, which is sliced into thin, round wafers, polished and coated with chemicals, producing layers of patterns etched into the wafer. The wafer is then cut into small squares and packaged in plastic, connecting the parts of the chip with tiny gold wires, which is ultimately placed onto a final product, such as a remote control or an anti-lock braking systems in automobiles.

Simulation

Simulating a chip design through software programs that use models to replicate how a device will perform in terms of timing and results.

Synthesis

The process by which a designer is able to fully automate the contents of an IC design. Today's chip designs have millions of switches. An engineer cannot possibly design all of these gates with pencil and paper. Companies such as Synopsys create software tools, called synthesis, that fully automate the creation of these switches -- making possible the design of semiconductors.

System-on-a-Chip (SoC)

Combining several chips with different functions onto one, single chip.

Transistor

A device used to amplify a signal or open and close a circuit. In a computer, it functions as an electronic switch.

Verification

In a chip design, verification means confirmation that one or more predetermined parameters, requirements, or specifications are met.

Verilog

A hardware description language. An industry-accepted standard language used by electronic designers to describe and design their chips and systems prior to fabrication.

VHDL

An IEEE-standard hardware description language originally developed by the U.S. Department of Defense as a common means of documenting electronic systems. Specified in the IEEE 1076 standard and used by electronic designers to describe and simulate their chips and systems prior to fabrication, an alternative language to Verilog.