Blog Review: April 13

Synopsys’ Scott Durrant, Priyank Shukla, Mitch Heins, and Jigesh Patel provide a brief overview of the history of copper and optical interconnects used in data centers, the limitations of existing interconnect solutions, and the future of co-packaged optics.

Siemens’ Trey Reeser finds that it’s not only necessary for semiconductor companies to address the safety and security of products for safety-critical markets, they should also be prepared to provide assurance and proof of compliance to the customer.

Cadence’s Paul McLellan checks out the Matter specification, an effort to standardize connectivity in the currently fragmented smart home market and make interoperability easier for both developers and consumers.

Arm’s Pierre-Alexandre Bou-Ach argues that technology roadmaps can no longer focus on performance alone and must start making decarbonization a priority, starting by measuring energy and power accurately and consistently.

Coventor’s Joan Asselot examines genetic algorithms, which are used to find the optimal solution to a mathematically difficult real-world problem, and how they can be applied to the design of MEMS devices.

Ansys’ Raja Badrinarayanan suggests building a digital twin of electric vehicle batteries to help assess the long-term effects of temperature, climate and weather exposure, usage patterns, driving speeds, high and low charge states, and electric current variations on battery designs.

SEMI’s Margaret Kindling highlights several women who have had a major impact on the microelectronics industry, from oscillators to superconductors.

Memory analyst Jim Handy checks out Content-Addressable Memory, or CAM, and how its ability to do something that other memory chips can’t do makes it useful for particular applications.

Plus, catch up on the blogs from the latest Automotive, Security & Pervasive Computing and Test, Measurement & Analytics newsletters:

Siemens EDA’s Lee Harrison explains why modeling and testing are so important for securing self-driving cars.

Rambus’ Bart Stevens zeroes in on standards for mitigating threats to automotive electronics.

Synopsys’ Pavithra C. Suriyanarayanan and Srini Krishnaswami examine best practices for designing products for functional safety.

Flex Logix’s Ralph Grundler points to the need for obfuscation to keep designs confidential.

AMD’s Giulio Corradi looks at how to handle the massive amount of data required for Industry 4.0 analytics.

Cadence’s Veena Parthan shows why UAV aerodynamics can be improved with CFD simulations and real world-testing.

Synopsys’ Jerry Lotto points to some of the less common considerations for assessing the suitability of a system for high-performance workloads.

Onto Innovation’s Melvin Lee shows how an external inspection system, and fault detection and classification software, increase ABF substrate yield.

Siemens’ Harshitha Kodali describes an automated approach for memory library mapping and validation, DFT insertion, and DFT area optimization.

Teradyne’s Christos Pantelidis presents a mixed statistical model to evaluate a common image sensor defect.