Author's Latest Posts


Upcoming Hurdles For The Semiconductor Industry


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss upcoming challenges and hurdles to overcome for the semiconductor industry with Vic Kulkarni, senior vice president and general manager, RTL Power Business at Ansys-Apache; Chris Rowen, Fellow and CTO, IP Group at Cadence; Subramani Kengeri, vice president, Global Design Solutions at GLOBALFOUNDRIES; Simon Davidmann, CEO of Imperas Software; Michael... » read more

Using Agile Methods For Hardware


[getkc id="182" kc_name=agile development"] methodology for software is getting a much closer look by hardware teams these days, because what used to work in SoC design and verification isn't working nearly as well with rising complexity. Development processes need to be constantly evolved to determine how to be more productive, deliver higher quality, cut costs in development, and how to g... » read more

System Bits: Jan. 26


Precisely controlling graphene molecules Researchers at UCLA’s California NanoSystems Institute have found that in the same way gardeners may use sheets of plastic with strategically placed holes to allow plants to grow but keep weeds from taking root, the same basic approach can be applied in terms of placing molecules in the specific patterns they need within tiny nanoelectronic devices, w... » read more

System Bits: Jan. 19


Electromagnetic properties of graphene-boron nitride materials Rice University and Montreal Polytechnic researchers reported that developing novel materials from the atoms up goes faster when some of the trial and error is eliminated. The work aims to simplify development of certain exotic materials for next-generation electronics. Specifically, Rouzbeh Shahsavari, a Rice materials scient... » read more

Bridging Hardware And Software


Methodology and reuse are two fairly standard concepts when it comes to semiconductor design, but they're viewed completely differently by hardware and software teams. It's a given that hardware and software have different goals and opinions about how best to do design. And while all agree that a single methodology can pay dividends in future chips, there is disagreement over who should shap... » read more

More Uses For Hypervisors


Hypervisors are showing up in more places than ever before as a quick and inexpensive way to utilize multiple cores and multiple chips more effectively and more securely. This marks an interesting twist for a technology that originally was developed as a way of enabling virtualization on a PC, allowing users to run multiple incompatible applications on the same computer. That was followed in... » read more

Why Build New Silicon?


You can’t turn around these days without hearing talk of our increasingly connected lives, tethered by the Internet of Everything (IoE), and cloud this, cloud that. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not knocking this next big thing because on many levels it is inspiring creativity, as all big things do. And the ramifications are still getting worked out as far as the impact on chip design, and t... » read more

System Bits: Jan. 12


Coaxing human stem cells to form human organs In a step toward personalized drug testing, MIT researchers have coaxed human stem cells to form complex tissues in a new technique, which also has near-term implications for growing organ-like tissues on a chip and that may ultimately allow personalized organs to be grown for transplant patients. The researchers said growing organs on demand, u... » read more

Sensors Enable ADAS


Under the hood, cars of today look nothing like those of a few decades ago. There are sophisticated safety and drivetrain monitoring features, software for interpreting and interacting with the outside world and modifying the inside environment, and a host of features that might have seemed impossible or even ridiculous in the past. And there's much more to come. Advanced driver assistance s... » read more

Driving CES


As a tech journalist, I have attended the Consumer Electronics Show a number of times over the past two decades, but do I miss it? If you haven’t been, it can be quite overwhelming given that it is aimed at consumers, so imagine loud music, flashing lights, and booth babes. It is also fun for us geeks from a technology perspective. Actually, it is interesting for anyone that likes to see ... » read more

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