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Ann Mutschler

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Ann Mutschler is senior executive editor at Semiconductor Engineering.

Author's Latest Posts

Using Software Approaches In Hardware Verification
By Ann Mutschler - 26 Dec, 2018 - Comments: 1

Agile methodologies, created to improve quality in software code, increasingly are being applied to hardware verification. This is less of a drastic shift than it might first appear. Developing a verification testbench is largely software, and similar methodologies can be used for reducing bugs in hardware. “A testbench is nothing more than a big software project, and it makes perfect s... » read more

Debug Tops Verification Tasks
By Ann Mutschler - 20 Dec, 2018 - Comments: 0

Verification engineers are spending an increased percentage of their time in debug — 44%, according to a recent survey by the Wilson Research Group. There are a variety or reasons for this, including the fact that some SoCs are composed of hundreds of internally developed and externally purchased IP blocks and subsystems. New system architectures contribute to the mix, some of which are be... » read more

More Than A Core
By Ann Mutschler - 20 Dec, 2018 - Comments: 0

Gajinder Pandesar, CTO of UltraSoC, talks with Semiconductor Engineering about why heterogeneous design is changing the starting point for chip design, and why integration is now the real challenge rather than the processor core. https://youtu.be/y0rzopp5HDI » read more

Designing For Ultra-Low-Power IoT Devices
By Ann Mutschler - 19 Dec, 2018 - Comments: 1

Optimizing designs for power is becoming the top design challenge in battery-driven IoT devices, boxed in by a combination of requirements such as low cost, minimum performance and functionality, as well as the need for at least some of the circuits to be always on. Power optimization is growing even more complicated as AI inferencing moves from the data center to the edge. Even simple... » read more

Impacts Of Reliability On Power And Performance
By Ann Mutschler - 13 Dec, 2018 - Comments: 0

Making sure a complex system performs as planned, and providing proper access to memories, requires a series of delicate tradeoffs that often were ignored in the past. But with performance improvements increasingly tied to architectures and microarchitectures, rather than just scaling to the next node, approaches such as determinism and different kinds of caching increasingly are becoming criti... » read more

Autonomous Vehicle Design Begins To Change Direction
By Ann Mutschler - 06 Dec, 2018 - Comments: 0

Tools that are commonly used in semiconductor design are starting to be applied at the system level for assisted and autonomous vehicles, setting the stage for more complex simulated scenarios and electronic system design. Simulation is well understood for designing automotive ICs, but now it also is being used to design vehicle architectures and sensors, as well as for sensor miniaturizatio... » read more

Mitigating Risk Through Verification
By Ann Mutschler - 05 Dec, 2018 - Comments: 0

Verification is all about mitigating risk, and one of the growing issues alongside of increasing complexity and new architectures is coverage. The whole notion of coverage is making sure a chip will work as designed. That requires determining the effectiveness of the simulation tests that stimulate it, and its effectiveness in terms of activating structures of functional behavior and design.... » read more

System Bits: Dec. 4
By Ann Mutschler - 04 Dec, 2018 - Comments: 0

High precision system for self-driving car navigation Based on technology developed by ETH Zurich researchers, Fixposition is a spin-off specializing in real-time navigation systems for use in self-driving vehicles, robots or industrial drones, which uses a combination of satellite-based positioning systems such as GPS with computer vision technologies to achieve an unparalleled degree of prec... » read more

Bare Metal Programming
By Ann Mutschler - 29 Nov, 2018 - Comments: 0

As the need for safety and security grows across application areas such as automotive, industrial, and in the cloud, the semiconductor industry is searching for the best ways to protect these systems. The big question is whether it is better to build security and safety into hardware, into software, or both. The answer isn't entirely clear yet, but one of the options under consideration is s... » read more

System Bits: Nov. 27
By Ann Mutschler - 27 Nov, 2018 - Comments: 2

Silent, lightweight aircraft powered by ionic wind Instead of propellers or turbines, MIT researchers have built and flown the first-ever aircraft with no moving parts that is powered by an “ionic wind” — a silent but mighty flow of ions that is produced aboard the plane, and that generates enough thrust to propel the plane over a sustained, steady flight. [caption id="attachment_2414... » read more

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