Author's Latest Posts


Power/Performance Bits: Jan. 19


Antiferromagnetic memory Physicists at The University of Nottingham, working in collaboration with researchers in the Czech Republic, Germany, Poland, and Hitachi Europe showed that the magnetic spins of antiferromagnets can be controlled to make a completely different form of digital memory. This was the first demonstration of electrical current control of antiferromagnets, and the first... » read more

The Week In Review: Design/IoT


Tools Rambus' Cryptography Research Division uncorked a new security platform for protecting and sharing 4K UHD and high dynamic range programming. It allows consumers to store, copy and share digital content across multiple devices, while also protecting the content from theft. Included are a secure core, a software player, and trusted key provisioning. Deals Arrow and Cadence announc... » read more

Blog Review: Jan. 13


Is it time for one of the Seven Wonders to return? In this week's top engineering and tech picks, Ansys' Justin Nescott highlights a project to rebuild the Colossus of Rhodes. Plus, new tech for cars and a hoodie for taking naps. From CES, Rambus' Aharon Etengoff expands on a talk about intelligent transportation systems and the need to balance technology which could help reduce accidents wi... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Jan. 12


Incandescent bulbs might not be dead yet Can incandescent bulbs be as efficient – or even more so – than LEDs? More than 95 percent of the energy that goes into incandescents is wasted, most of it as heat, so researchers at MIT and Purdue University struck out to see if that could be changed. A conventional heated metal filament, with all its attendant losses, served as the basis. But... » read more

The Week In Review: Design/IoT


EDA & IP EDA revenues increased 7.1% for Q3 2015, according to the EDA Consortium, upping the number to $1957.5 million, compared to $1828.1 million in Q3 2014. The four-quarters moving average also jumped by 8.8%. IC Physical Design & Verification saw the biggest gains, with a 14% increase compared to Q3 2014 and $407.9 million in revenue for the quarter. IP was runner up, with $652... » read more

Blog Review: Jan. 6


Mobile is not just about handsets, but also cloud datacenters and the networking to move data back and forth. Cadence's Paul McLellan takes a look at the future of traditional dataservers with the rise of microservers and the use of FPGA accelerators. Mentor's Jay Gorajia has ideas for how to best leverage manufacturing analytics, but says that care must be taken in deciding which data shoul... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Jan. 5


A foggy consortium Scientists at Princeton University, ARM, Cisco, Dell, Intel, and Microsoft formed a global effort to develop architectures and tools to further "fog computing" and networks, which aim to harness connected devices' own computing, sensing and storage power to form edge networks that meet most of the demand of user devices that are at the periphery of a more centralized netwo... » read more

The Week In Review: Design/IoT


Intel completed its $16.7 billion acquisition of Altera this week. Check out our analysis of why this may be the most important M&A deal of 2015 for the semiconductor industry, and the challenges faced in making it work. NXP uncorked its latest multi-protocol NFC frontend, incorporating ISO/IEC 15693, Felica, MIFARE and ISO/IEC 14443A/B. According to NXP, it delivers four times more outp... » read more

Blog Review: Dec. 30


It's been a quiet week on the blog front. If you're looking for a bit of downtime while you enjoy the New Year, we present thoughts on what's happened this year and what may be to come from last week's System-Level Design newsletter: Editor in Chief Ed Sperling finds acquisitions and the leading edge of design defined 2015, but other changes are ahead. Technology Editor Brian Bailey obser... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Dec. 29


Wearing your batteries In spite of the progress in wearable devices, one challenge remaining is providing less obtrusive and cumbersome power sources. To tackle the problem, researchers at Case Western Reserve University developed flexible wire-shaped microsupercapacitors that can be woven into a jacket, shirt or dress. "The area of clothing is fixed, so to generate the power density need... » read more

← Older posts Newer posts →