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Ann Mutschler

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Ann Mutschler is senior executive editor at Semiconductor Engineering.

Author's Latest Posts

Smart Farming Accelerates
By Ann Mutschler - 03 May, 2018 - Comments: 0

Today I’m taking a brief, but related, detour from my usual automotive blog topics to discuss a bit of what’s happening related to autonomy but in the agricultural industry. This industry carries a market cap of $42.7 billion as a whole for the construction and agricultural machinery market, according to The New York Times, although still smaller than the semiconductor segment, with its ... » read more

Toward Autonomous Farming
By Ann Mutschler - 03 May, 2018 - Comments: 0

While the automotive industry works diligently towards self-driving vehicles, it's possible the carrots you've eaten recently were semi-autonomously planted and harvested with Case IH equipment by Bolthouse Farms, one of the largest carrot growers in the United States. And the U.S. is hardly alone. Autonomous agriculture is coming everywhere, and it's happening much faster than autonomous ca... » read more

System Bits: May 1
By Ann Mutschler - 01 May, 2018 - Comments: 0

Tiniest implanted wireless nerve stimulator UC Berkeley researchers, co-led by Rikky Muller, who is also assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences at Berkeley, have built what they say is the smallest volume, most efficient wireless nerve stimulator to date. Before this milestone, UC Berkeley engineers demonstrated the first implanted, ultrasonic neural dust sensor... » read more

Partitioning Becomes More Difficult
By Ann Mutschler - 30 Apr, 2018 - Comments: 0

The divide-and-conquer approach that has been the backbone of verification for decades is becoming more difficult at advanced nodes. There are more interactions from different blocks and features, more power domains, more physical effects to track, and far more complex design rules to follow. This helps explain why the number of tools required on each design—simulation, prototyping, em... » read more

More Nodes, New Problems
By Ann Mutschler - 26 Apr, 2018 - Comments: 0

The rollout of leading-edge process nodes is accelerating rather than slowing down, defying predictions that device scaling would begin to subside due to rising costs and the increased difficulty of developing chips at those nodes. Costs are indeed rising. So are the number of design rules, which reflect skyrocketing complexity stemming from multiple patterning, more devices on a chip, and m... » read more

Tech Talk: Improving Verification
By Ann Mutschler - 26 Apr, 2018 - Comments: 0

Frank Schirrmeister, senior group director for product management and marketing at Cadence, discusses how to verify different use cases, focusing on software, low-power designs, connectivity, and a variety of end markets. https://youtu.be/gK-0vmIWxJs » read more

System Bits: April 24
By Ann Mutschler - 24 Apr, 2018 - Comments: 0

Some superconductors carry spin currents A few years ago, researchers from the University of Cambridge showed that it was possible to create electron pairs in which the spins are aligned: up-up or down-down. The spin current can be carried by up-up and down-down pairs moving in opposite directions with a net charge current of zero, and the ability to create such a pure spin super-current is an... » read more

Designing 5G Chips
By Ann Mutschler - 18 Apr, 2018 - Comments: 0

5G is the wireless technology of the future, and it’s coming fast. The technology boasts very high-speed data transfer rates, much lower latency than 4G LTE, and the ability to handle significantly higher densities of devices per cell site. In short, it is the best technology for the massive amount of data that will be generated by sensors in cars, IoT devices, and a growing list of next-g... » read more

System Bits: April 17
By Ann Mutschler - 17 Apr, 2018 - Comments: 0

Smartphone microscopes transformed into lab-grade devices with deep learning UCLA Samueli School of Engineering researchers have demonstrated that deep learning techniques can discern and enhance microscopic details in photos taken by smartphones in order to improve the resolution and color details of smartphone images so much that they approach the quality of images from laboratory-grade mic... » read more

High-Performance Memory Challenges
By Ann Mutschler - 12 Apr, 2018 - Comments: 1

Designing memories for high-performance applications is becoming far more complex at 7/5nm. There are more factors to consider, more bottlenecks to contend with, and more tradeoffs required to solve them. One of the biggest challenges is the sheer volume of data that needs to be processed for AI, machine learning or deep learning, or even in classic data center server racks. “The design... » read more

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