Blog Review: May 27

With the launch of UNICEF and ARM’s ‘Wearables for Good’ design challenge, David Maidment digs into the program’s details and how unobtrusive wearables and sensor technology benefits not only consumers in affluent countries, but could improve conditions for those in the developing world as well.

From an ultracompact beamsplitter that could boost processing power for supercomputers within the next three years to an international fusion reactor that won’t be online until 2027, Ansys’ Bill Vandermark focuses on incremental and exponential leaps in technology in this week’s top five engineering articles.

Five years after Cadence’s acquisition of Denali, Richard Goering sits down with founder and former CEO Sanjay Srivastava for a chat about the history of Denali, the acquisition, why EDA companies are providing IP, the future of the IP business, and his new educational startup.

The research firm IHS reports that electrification is driving growth in the powertrain semiconductor market – 8.3% growth in 2014 and a compound annual growth rate of nearly 6% from $7.2 billion in 2014 to $9.5 billion in 2019. Mentor’s John Day has the details.

FPGA-based prototype debug must no longer be treated as an afterthought, according to Synopsys’ Michael Posner, who presents a simple example of the pitfalls of not accounting for debug upfront.

Big Data analytics spans virtually all industries—from healthcare to transportation, from banking to manufacturing. Rambus’ Aharon Etengoff examines what real-time analytics on multi-terabyte and even petabyte-scale datasets means for memory.

NXP’s Charles Dachs looks at the history of NFC and its impact on mobile phones over the last decade.

In celebration of the company’s 35^th anniversary, a Lam Research staff writer looks back at the semiconductor industry’s major milestones through the decades.

Plus, check out these blogs from last week’s Manufacturing, Design & Test newsletter:

Editor in Chief Ed Sperling says the future after the next process node is uncertain, which should keep everyone on edge for years to come.

Executive Editor Mark LaPedus observes that to figure out when 10nm will happen you need to follow the fabs.

Mentor Graphics’ Bill Graupp writes that a well-designed programmable edge modification flow can improve a layout by analyzing a design and removing offending edges.

KLA-Tencor’s Zain Saidin takes a 37-year tour of fab equipment to show much has changed in a field many of us take for granted.

SEMI’s Debra Vogler digs into what’s needed at 10nm and below and why.