Alternative Text

Ann Mutschler

  (all posts)
Ann Mutschler is senior executive editor at Semiconductor Engineering.

Author's Latest Posts

Bridging IP With Verification Standards
By Ann Mutschler - 21 Oct, 2010 - Comments: 0

By Ann Steffora Mutschler Standards body Accellera is sounding the gong to summon all verification IP providers to check out its efforts in connection with IP-XACT -- IEEE 1685, "Standard for IP-XACT, Standard Structure for Packaging, Integrating and Re-Using IP Within Tool-Flows” – with verification IP. The IP-XACT technical committee has been busy over the past year. Formerly an effor... » read more

Connecting IP Blocks
By Ann Mutschler - 07 Oct, 2010 - Comments: 0

Is there a standard way to hook up specifically low-power IP blocks today? For all intents and purposes, no. Before even talking about IP interoperability in terms of power, Philippe Magarshack, general manager of central CAD and design solutions at STMicroelectronics asserted those IPs must be hooked up correctly functionally and in a productive and safe way. He said ST is forging ahead ... » read more

Moving To Open-Source Software
By Ann Mutschler - 23 Sep, 2010 - Comments: 0

By Ann Steffora Mutschler With the typical cost of software accounting for 40% to 60% of an SoC, semiconductor OEMs are under more pressure than ever to meet margins. As a result, they are drawing on their ecosystem partners to provide a more complete foundation including hardware, software, FPGA prototypes, verification IP and virtual models, as well as an increasing demand for open source so... » read more

Estimating Power From Mobile Device Apps
By Ann Mutschler - 09 Sep, 2010 - Comments: 0

By Ann Steffora Mutschler How do software application developers – even the ones sitting at home on their living room sofas with laptops – measure the power consumption of their application on the target device? This is a big problem today (something that is painfully obvious to owners of iPhones or Blackberries), and it will only get bigger. Software engineers may think it is not their... » read more

Burn, Baby, Burn
By Ann Mutschler - 09 Sep, 2010 - Comments: 0

Obviously, software burns power on mobile devices, but exactly how? I found out recently, thanks to Pete Hardee, director of solutions marketing at Cadence Design Systems. Essentially, Hardee said, there are four ways that software burns power, following in order from most to least. First, depending on the mode, various peripherals are on and off and the big one for a smartphone is the LC... » read more

The Growing Software Challenge: From Stacks To SMP
By Ann Mutschler - 26 Aug, 2010 - Comments: 0

By Ann Steffora Mutschler Building a system now includes software, but defining the software stack is a mounting challenge for engineers. What used to be almost exclusively drivers now includes RTOSes and OSes, executable files, middleware, firmware, IP, embedded software and applications. With millions of different embedded products, all with different sets of software, it comes down to pr... » read more

Extending Moore’s Law
By Ann Mutschler - 26 Aug, 2010 - Comments: 0

By Ann Steffora Mutschler For Moore’s Law to perpetuate, the materials used in semiconductor manufacturing must do their part to allow the scaling of devices to occur. Some of the latest include a carbonless film deposition technology for 20nm transistors and smaller, a plastic memory device and a material compound of silicon, copper, nickel and iron that researchers believe could lower manu... » read more

iPhone Has The Power Blues
By Ann Mutschler - 12 Aug, 2010 - Comments: 0

Why do some apps on the iPhone seem to draw more on the battery than others? Is it a matter of power-aware software applications, or is it a hardware issue? Maybe it is a combination of both. I suspect it is due to the intricacies of hardware/software design and verification. I’ve been mulling this over while researching my two articles for this month’s issue of Low-Power Engineering... » read more

Why Open Source Matters
By Ann Mutschler - 22 Jul, 2010 - Comments: 0

By Ann Steffora Mutschler A huge effort has been under way to create virtual prototypes that allow true hardware/software co-design, but there are still a number of pieces missing. One significant missing element is a full library of IP models to guide the process, and the solution could come from an unlikely place—open source developers. Today, ‘open source’ IP generally seems to be ... » read more

ESL Requires New Approaches To Design And Verification
By Ann Mutschler - 22 Jul, 2010 - Comments: 0

By Ann Steffora Mutschler As more data gets front loaded into SoC architectures today, understanding verification challenges as well as communication between the front and back end has never been more critical. “All of this is getting more complicated,” said John Ford, director of marketing at ARM. “There was a time when an ARM processor core was all that was on a chip. Now there’s ... » read more

← Older posts Newer posts →

  • Sponsors

About

Navigation

Connect With Us

Copyright ©2013-2026 SMG   |  Terms of Service  |  Privacy Policy