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Ann Mutschler

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Ann Mutschler is executive editor at Semiconductor Engineering.

Author's Latest Posts

HW/SW Design At The Intelligent Edge
By Ann Mutschler - 08 Jul, 2019 - Comments: 0

Adding intelligence to the edge is a lot more difficult than it might first appear, because it requires an understanding of what gets processed where based on assumptions about what the edge actually will look like over time. What exactly falls under the heading of Intelligent Edge varies from one person to the next, but all agree it goes well beyond yesterday’s simple sensor-based IoT dev... » read more

How To Automate Functional Safety
By Ann Mutschler - 02 Jul, 2019 - Comments: 0

Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss functional safety thinking, techniques and approaches to automation with Mike Stellfox, Fellow at Cadence; Bryan Ramirez, strategic marketing manager at Mentor, a Siemens Business; Jörg Grosse, product manager for functional safety at OneSpin Solutions; and Marc Serughetti, senior director of product marketing for automotive verification solutions ... » read more

Test Chips Play Larger Role At Advanced Nodes
By Ann Mutschler - 27 Jun, 2019 - Comments: 0

Test chips are becoming more widespread and more complex at advanced process nodes as design teams utilize early silicon to diagnose problems prior to production. But this approach also is spurring questions about whether this approach is viable at 7nm and 5nm, due to the rising cost of prototyping advanced technology, such as mask tooling and wafer costs. Semiconductor designers have long b... » read more

Telle Whitney Receives IEEE Honorary Membership
By Ann Mutschler - 22 Jun, 2019 - Comments: 0

On May 17 Telle Whitney received the 2019 IEEE Honorary Membership at the 2019 IEEE Vision, Innovation, and Challenges Summit (IEEE VIC Summit) in San Diego for leadership in supporting and promoting women in technology, and for building a highly impactful global organization dedicated to this purpose. Sponsored by IEEE, the grade of Honorary Member is a significant honor bestowed by IEEE a... » read more

Wrestling With High-Speed SerDes
By Ann Mutschler - 19 Jun, 2019 - Comments: 2

SerDes has emerged as the primary solution in chips where there is a need for fast data movement and limited I/O, but this technology is becoming significantly more challenging to work with as speeds continue to rise to offset the massive increase in data. A Serializer/Deserializer is used to convert parallel data into serial data, allowing designers to speed up data communication without h... » read more

Circuit Aging Becoming A Critical Consideration
By Ann Mutschler - 17 Jun, 2019 - Comments: 5

Circuit aging was considered somebody else's problem when most designs were for chips in consumer applications, but not anymore. Much of this reflects a shift in markets. When most chips were designed for consumer electronics, such as smart phones, designs typically were replaced every couple of years. But with the mobile phone market flattening, and as chips increasingly are used in automot... » read more

BiST Grows Up In Automotive
By Ann Mutschler - 12 Jun, 2019 - Comments: 0

Test concepts and methods that have been used for many years in traditional semiconductor and SoC design are now being leveraged for automotive chips, but they need to be adapted and upgraded to enable monitoring of advanced automotive systems during operation of a vehicle. Automotive and safety critical designs have very high quality, reliability, and safety requirements, which pairs pe... » read more

Training Tomorrow’s Chip Designers
By Ann Mutschler - 05 Jun, 2019 - Comments: 1

With technology advancing rapidly and the growing number of open R&D projects, there is an expanding need for qualified engineers. To make this possible, practical education needs to start much earlier than after graduation. One the best ways the EDA and semiconductor industry has embraced is encouraging engineering students to cooperate with experienced engineers, technologists and indu... » read more

Why IP Quality Is So Difficult To Determine
By Ann Mutschler - 30 May, 2019 - Comments: 0

Differentiating good IP from mediocre or bad IP is getting more difficult, in part because it depends up on how and where it is used and in part because even the best IP may work better in one system than another—even in chips developed by the same vendor. This has been one of the challenges with IP over the years. In many cases, IP is poorly characterized, regardless of whether that IP wa... » read more

In-Chip Monitoring Becoming Essential Below 10nm
By Ann Mutschler - 20 May, 2019 - Comments: 0

Rising systemic complexity and more potential interactions in heterogeneous designs is making it much more difficult to ensure a chip, or even a block within a chip, will functioning properly without actually monitoring that behavior in real-time. Continuous and sporadic monitoring have been creeping into designs for the past couple of decades. But it hasn’t always been clear how effective... » read more

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