Author's Latest Posts


Power/Performance Bits: Oct. 6


Waste plastic supercapacitor Researchers from the University of California Riverside found a way to recycle waste plastic into energy storage devices. The work focused on polyethylene terephthalate plastic waste, or PET, which is found in soda bottles and many other consumer products. The researchers first dissolved pieces of PET plastic bottles in a solvent. Using electrospinning, they fab... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


Arteris IP will acquire the assets of Magillem Design Services, combining Arteris' NoC interconnect IP with Magillem's chip design and assembly environment. Magillem’s software products will continue to be offered separately from the Arteris interconnect IP offerings and the joined company will continue to execute on Magillem’s existing product and technology roadmaps. Substantially all Mag... » read more

Startup Funding: September 2020


It was a good month for startups, with big rounds in automotive, data centers, and AI. A new startup with big backing is taking aim at energy inefficiency in the data center, and another is looking to make the industrial IoT battery-free. SK Hynix founded a new company to analyze semiconductor manufacturing data, and one of China's EV companies sees a massive cash infusion. This month, we look ... » read more

Blog Review: Sept. 30


Synopsys' Fred Bals takes a look open source projects that, while popular, go understaffed or underfunded, how that can lead to potential security vulnerabilities, and why users who rely on them should consider stepping up to contribute. In a video, Mentor's Colin Walls explains the basic concepts of multicore systems as it relates to embedded programming. Cadence's Paul McLellan ponders ... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Sept. 29


Implantable transmitter Researchers from Purdue University developed a fully implantable, wirelessly powered 2.4GHz radio-frequency transmitter chip for wireless sensor nodes and biomedical devices. The team says the transmitter chip consumes the lowest amount of energy per digital bit published to date, consuming an active-mode power of 70 μW at 10 Mbps while radiating -33 dBm of power, r... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


Tools & IP Arm added two new platforms to its product roadmap: the Neoverse V1, and the Neoverse N2, the second-generation N-series platform. The V1 platform supports Scalable Vector Extensions (SVE), provides 50% better single-threaded performance over N1, and targets high-performance cloud, HPC, and machine learning applications. The N2 provides 40% higher single-threaded performance com... » read more

Blog Review: Sept. 23


Arm's Matthew Mattina introduces a method to reduce the cost of neural network inference by combining both low-precision representation and the complexity-reducing Winograd transform while maintaining accuracy. Cadence's Paul McLellan checks out some of the biggest machine learning systems from Nvidia, Google, and Cerebras that were presented at the recent Hot Chips. Mentor's Robin Bornof... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Sept. 22


Drawing sensors on skin Researchers from the University of Houston and University of Chicago created an ink pen that can draw multifunctional sensors and circuits directly on skin. These "drawn-on-skin electronics" aim to provide more precise health data, free of the artifacts that are associated with wearable devices and flexible electronic patches. Caused when the sensor doesn't move prec... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


Nvidia will acquire Arm from SoftBank in a $40 billion deal. Nvidia says that Arm will continue to operate its open-licensing model while maintaining global customer neutrality. SoftBank acquired Arm in 2016 for $32 billion; it also holds an ownership stake in Nvidia that is expected to remain under 10%. The deal does not include Arm's IoT Services Group. The acquisition will need to pass regul... » read more

Blog Review: Sept. 16


Cadence's Paul McLellan checks out what's new for TSMC's advanced packaging solutions and the ultra-low power, RF, eNVM, and CMOS image sensor specialty processes. Mentor's Ron Press points to an automated solution to measuring pattern value that provides a consistent, “apples to apples” assessment of patterns detecting defects based on the likelihood the physical defects occurring. S... » read more

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