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Ann Mutschler

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Ann Mutschler is senior executive editor at Semiconductor Engineering.

Author's Latest Posts

FPGA’s Role Expands
By Ann Mutschler - 10 Sep, 2015 - Comments: 1

For more than a decade FPGA vendors argued that FPGAs would become a viable alternative to ASICs, adding programmability along with the same kind of advances in performance and power that ASICs saw at each new process node. While that never played out as they expected, FPGAs nonetheless have carved out a formidable position in the semiconductor market. Generally speaking, FPGAs today are us... » read more

Performance Analysis On Dark Silicon
By Ann Mutschler - 10 Sep, 2015 - Comments: 0

It’s one thing to do performance analysis on the ‘light’ parts of an SoC design, but what about when most of the silicon is ‘dark?’ Jon McDonald, technical marketing engineer at Mentor Graphics stressed that modeling the effects of turning on and off sections of the silicon is an important part of creating an accurate representation of the system. “Our models support state-based... » read more

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

Engineering verifies disarmament agreements While it might sound a bit far fetched at first glance, an MIT PhD has developed a tool to identify nuclear weapons. Ruaridh Macdonald, now working on a nuclear weapons verification project in the Laboratory for Nuclear Security and Policy, whereby the linchpin of disarmament agreements is to be able to verify that the signers are following the ru... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Sept. 8
By Ann Mutschler - 08 Sep, 2015 - Comments: 0

Solar water-splitting By splitting water molecules, Rice University researchers have demonstrated what they say is an efficient way to capture energy from the sun and convert it into clean, renewable energy. The technology relies on a configuration of light-activated gold nanoparticles that harvest sunlight and transfer solar energy to highly excited electrons, which scientists sometimes re... » read more

How Long Will FinFETs Last?
By Ann Mutschler - 07 Sep, 2015 - Comments: 0

Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss how long [getkc id="185" kc_name="FinFET"]s will last and where we will we go next with Vassilios Gerousis, Distinguished Engineer at [getentity id="22032" e_name="Cadence"]; Juan Rey, Sr. Director of Engineering for Calibre R&D at [getentity id="22017" e_name="Mentor Graphics"]; Kelvin Low, Senior Director, Foundry Marketing at [getentity id="2286... » read more

Can Cars Be Hack-Proof?
By Ann Mutschler - 03 Sep, 2015 - Comments: 0

Not many days go by when there isn't a news headline describing the latest hacking attempt — or success — of an automobile or automotive system. Malicious hacking has been around almost since the dawn of connected electronics, but it's happening with increasing sophistication in the automotive sector. Even high-end vehicles suffer security flaws that are too costly or not worthwhile to f... » read more

Securing The Car
By Ann Mutschler - 03 Sep, 2015 - Comments: 0

"The bigger and more high tech a company is, the easier it is to use the front door." --Nomi, Sense8 As the quote above — from the Netflix sci-fi show Sense8 — reminds, as technology as infiltrated our lives as never before, ‘bad guys’ will try to get access to places we don’t want them to, and once they figure out how, it can be easy to cause a lot of damage by using the very sy... » read more

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

The quantum description of nature In quantum mechanics, the underlying physical rules that govern the fundamental behavior of matter and light at the atomic scale state that nothing can quite be completely at rest, but now for the first time, a team of researchers from Caltech, McGill University, and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light has found a way to observe—and control—t... » read more

The Trouble With Abstractions
By Ann Mutschler - 27 Aug, 2015 - Comments: 0

Ask chip engineers about the value of abstractions and you're likely to get a spectrum of answers. While abstractions help in seeing the big picture on complex designs, the data for performance and power needs to be annotated from detailed information the engineering team may obtain later in the design flow. There is valuable information that can come from using abstractions correctly. And ... » read more

What Happened To ESL
By Ann Mutschler - 27 Aug, 2015 - Comments: 3

Electronic system level ([getkc id="48" kc_name="ESL"]) is a design methodology idea that gained steam in the last 20 years centered mainly around the idea of using higher levels of abstraction to define and implement an electronic design. It was defined and promoted by industry analyst Gary Smith, then at Gartner-Dataquest, and so much has been written on this topic over the years that ESL ... » read more

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