Dangerous Electricity


Electricity to the modern age is as indispensible as air, but too much can be a bad thing for automotive and aerospace applications—especially when it is in the form of electrostatic discharge (ESD). As chips advance to 28nm, 20nm and 16nm, the design window for electrostatic discharge is shrinking for a number of reasons, explained Norman Chang is vice president and senior product strategis... » read more

Field Solvers To The Rescue


By Pallab Chatterjee Field solvers have always been part of the Parasitic Extraction (PEX) world, but due to their long run times and complexity in configuration, their role was relegated to the setup/reference table generation for the pattern based 1-D and 2-D RC extraction tools. That’s about to change. Mentor, in combination with STMicroelectronics, one of it customers, said that at ... » read more

Power Trip Advisor


By Geoffrey James There’s never been a greater demand for power-efficient silicon. As consumer electronic devices get smaller, with increased functionality, battery power becomes a premium resource. At the same time, “Green IT” is a major corporate trend, and the best way to be environmentally sensitive (while saving on energy costs) is to buy technology that ekes the maximum computing o... » read more