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Ann Mutschler

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Ann Mutschler is senior executive editor at Semiconductor Engineering.

Author's Latest Posts

Bridging Hardware And Software
By Ann Mutschler - 22 Dec, 2015 - Comments: 0

Since the advent of embedded systems there has been a struggle between hardware engineers trying to understand the mindset of their software counterparts, and vice versa. That struggle is alive and well today—and it's costing everyone money. This divide is rife with passion, territoriality and misunderstanding. It has delayed tapeouts, created errors and inefficiencies that take time and e... » read more

Why Test Is Changing
By Ann Mutschler - 22 Dec, 2015 - Comments: 0

Test is undergoing a revolution in terms of how it is perceived, how it is performed and where it is done. For years, test was something of an afterthought. It was a separate operation that was done after the design was finished, or it was a self-contained module that had to be characterized for power, heat and electrical effects, but not much else. As more chips find their way into markets ... » read more

System Bits: Dec. 15
By Ann Mutschler - 15 Dec, 2015 - Comments: 0

Building chips skyscraper style With the aim of boosting electronic performance by factor of a thousand, a team of researchers led by Stanford University engineers have created a skyscraper-like chip design, based on materials more advanced than silicon. For many years, computer systems have been designed with processors and memory chips laid out like single-story structures in a suburb whe... » read more

New Approaches To Low Power Design
By Ann Mutschler - 14 Dec, 2015 - Comments: 1

While Moore's Law continues to drive feature size reduction and complexity, a whole separate part of the industry is growing up around vertical markets in the IoT. While these two worlds may be different in many respects, they share one thing in common—low power design is critical to success. How engineering teams minimize power in each of these markets, and even within the same market, ca... » read more

How To Choose A Processor
By Ann Mutschler - 10 Dec, 2015 - Comments: 0

Choosing a processor might seem straightforward at first glance, but like many engineering challenges it's harder than it looks. When is a CPU better than a GPU, MCU, DSP or other type of processor? And for what design—or part of a design? For decades, the CPU has been the default choice. “It is deliberately designed to be pretty efficient at all tasks, is straightforward to program, ... » read more

The Power Of Software
By Ann Mutschler - 10 Dec, 2015 - Comments: 0

There is no argument about the increasing importance of software in system designs today, given the intimate and integral role it plays in directing the very hardware it is co-designed with. There is also a very good case for certain kinds of software that lend themselves more to certain types of processors. This, of course, depends on what is meant by the type of processor, asserted Coli... » read more

System Bits: Dec. 8
By Ann Mutschler - 08 Dec, 2015 - Comments: 0

Untraceable text-messaging Anonymity networks, like Tor, which sit on top of the public Internet, were meant to conceal Web-browsing habits but recent research by MIT has shown that adversaries can infer a great deal about the sources of supposedly anonymous communications by monitoring data traffic though a few well-chosen nodes in an anonymity network. To fight this growing concern, a tea... » read more

How To Model Cars
By Ann Mutschler - 03 Dec, 2015 - Comments: 1

The most technologically advanced and comprehensive consumer product in the world today is not the smartphone. It's the automobile. This is easier to see once the hood is up and you can take a peek around. Today’s cars contain sophisticated motion systems, crash safety systems, climate control systems, driver assistance, and infotainment, to name a few. In semiconductor design, one of the ... » read more

Driving The Road Less Traveled
By Ann Mutschler - 03 Dec, 2015 - Comments: 1

To a large extent, the automotive industry does not follow traditional design approaches that are seen in the semiconductor industry, mostly because of the way the automotive ecosystem is structured, combined with a level of complexity not seen even in products like smartphones and other highly sophisticated consumer electronic devices. Thomas Heurung, manager of technical sales teams in Eur... » read more

System Bits: Dec. 1
By Ann Mutschler - 01 Dec, 2015 - Comments: 0

Extracting the right information in large data sets When solving complex scientific problems, researchers sometimes encounter what is called the curse of dimensionality, that is, they have so much data that they cannot efficiently analyze it. Large data sets can also be expensive and time consuming to acquire, so it is critical to gather only what is necessary. To this end, University of Il... » read more

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