Author's Latest Posts


Power/Performance Bits: Nov. 10


Singing to your storage Existing research on 'racetrack memory', which uses tiny magnetic wires, each one hundreds of times thinner than a human hair, down which magnetic bits of data run like racing cars around a track, has focused on using either magnetic fields or electric currents to move the data bits down the wires. However, both these options create heat and reduce power efficiency. ... » read more

The Week In Review: Design/IoT


Mentor Graphics began selling infrastructure hardware this week, including an end-to-end IoT solution that includes a reference design for a customizable gateway, a cloud backend, and runtime solutions on which to build a wide array of IoT edge devices. Mentor also released virtual platforms for Altera's Arria 10 SoC FPGA, and updated its Valor PCB manufacturing process to focus on Industry 4.0... » read more

Blog Review: Nov. 4


Can agile methodologies typically used in software development bring more efficiency to chip design? For UC Berkeley Professor Borivoje Nikolic, the answer is, why not? Christine Young reports on the keynote at Cadence's Mixed-Signal Technology Summit. For his latest embedded video, Mentor's Colin Walls focuses the camera on language standardization and use of language extensions. Ansys' ... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Nov. 3


Lithium-air batteries gain ground Scientists at the University of Cambridge have developed a working laboratory demonstration of a lithium-oxygen battery which has very high energy density, is more than 90% efficient, and can be recharged more than 2000 times. Their demonstrator relies on a highly porous, 'fluffy' carbon electrode made from graphene (comprising one-atom-thick sheets of ca... » read more

The Week In Review: Design/IoT


Tools Aldec introduced Hybrid Emulation including support for ARM Fast Models. Aldec says the capability to link an SoC emulation hardware platform with a virtual platform allows both software and hardware teams to work on the most up-to-date version of the project, long before first silicon is available, or even much of the RTL or IP has been completed. eSilicon's online quoting tools fo... » read more

Blog Review: Oct. 28


Get up to date on the latest USB 3.1 happenings with Synopsys' Eric Huang, including the first laptops shipping with the Type C connector, the importance of USB safety, and price cuts on chips from Intel and ASMedia. The connected car is ready to hit the mass market, according to automakers, but customer adoption has been slow. Mentor's John Day takes a look at a report from the TU-Detroit c... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Oct. 27


Searching for energy-efficient architectures A workshop jointly funded by the Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) and National Science Foundation (NSF) sought out the key factors limiting progress in computing – particularly related to energy consumption – and novel research that could overcome these barriers. The report focuses on the most promising research directions in the ex... » read more

The Week In Review: Design/IoT


M&A ARM acquired Carbon Design Systems and its staff for an undisclosed sum, adding virtual prototyping capabilities for ARM cores. In 2008, ARM sold Carbon the tools it acquired in the 2004 purchase of virtual prototype development company AXYS Design Automation. Tools Mentor Graphics updated its PADS software, adding 3D tool capabilities to provide visualization, placement, and d... » read more

Blog Review: Oct. 21


Ansys' Bill Vandermark goes back to the future in this week's top five picks. Plus, the star of the world's longest hoverboard flight gets an upgrade. Perhaps the person riding it will be wearing an ocean-cleaning bikini. Straight from MemCon 2015, Rambus' Aharon Etengoff brings us a keynote exploring the increasingly blurred lines between memory and storage, and how an alternative paradigm ... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Oct. 20


Memristors come in threes The race is on to produce a commercial memristor, and a duo from ETH Zurich may be providing a bit more push. "Basically, memristors require less energy since they work at lower voltages," explained Jennifer Rupp, professor in the Department of Materials at ETH Zurich. "They can be made much smaller than today's memory modules, and therefore offer much greater de... » read more

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