The power-estimation ladder from spreadsheet to silicon — what each method needs, what it can and cannot see, the tools that do it, and the realistic error band on each. Plus where the error actually comes from, why activity dominates it, and which design decisions are still open at each rung.
Posts by alex.novickis@gmail.com
TLA+ for Hardware: Proving the Protocol Before the RTL Exists
A practical guide to using TLA+ and PlusCal on hardware problems — where model checking reaches that SVA and formal property checking cannot, worked specifications for power-domain sequencing and arbitration, how to handle state-space explosion, and how a spec-level proof hands off to SVA assertions and UVM sequences.
The Power Amplifier: Efficiency, Linearity, and the Load That Is Not a Match
How RF power amplifiers are designed and specified — conduction-angle classes A through C and switching classes D, E and F, P1dB and PAE, why load-pull rather than conjugate matching finds the optimum load, back-off and digital pre-distortion, ruggedness into VSWR, and the thermal design that decides reliability.