Blog Review: April 15

How much memory do you need to look 13 billion years in the past? Rambus’ Aharon Etengoff ponders the Square Kilometre Array’s massive number of radio telescopes and what it means for computing.

NXP’s Martin Schoessler argues that for smart cities to work for their citizens, both technology companies and government entities will need a new mind-set.

Reinventing the wheel is a good thing in this week’s top five engineering articles, picked by Ansys’ Justin Nescott. Plus a fiasco pitting astronomers against robot lawnmowers, and a bandage made of skin cells is the newest treatment for burns.

Agile hardware expert Neil Johnson addresses a recent SemiEng article and says no matter how much you increase debug productivity, you’re only reducing its negative impact.

After three or four months, “soon” is here. Synopsys’ Richard Solomon announces the latest draft of PCIe 4.0 and now is the time for your opinions.

From TSMC’s Technology Symposium, Cadence’s Richard Goering reports on the changes and challenges 10nm design starts will face. Plus, links to other coverage of the event.

If you’ve ever been frustrated by “easy to use” software that only succeeds in obfuscating functions, you may empathize with the video editing difficulties Mentor’s Michael Ford recently faced.

ARM’s Mayank Sharma returns from three months in Taipei with three lessons learned for IP project managers.

For more good reading, check out the blogs featured in last week’s Low Power-High Performance newsletter:

Editor In Chief Ed Sperling observes the semiconductor industry is undergoing seismic shifts that will affect everything from tools to equipment to the future of Moore’s Law.

Executive Editor Ann Steffora Mutschler questions whether offloading tasks to specialized hardware is worth the trouble.

Mentor Graphics consultant Lauro Rizzatti questions whether it’s time for the industry to devise a nimbler, faster and more efficient methodology.

Atrenta’s Ravindra Aneja explains the advantages and best approaches for using linting tools for fast and shallow analysis on very large designs.

Cadence’s Brian Fuller examines the symbiotic relationship between systems designers and the semiconductor and EDA ecosystem, and why it’s so essential.

Ansys’ Arti Dwivedi rolls out some best practices for using UPF and key questions to consider along the way.

ARM’s Neil Parris digs into hardware coherency to manage sharing automatically and simplify software.

Synopsys’ Angela Raucher and Elliptic’s Dana Neustadter zero in on key questions to ask on security when looking at HDMI 2.0 and HDCP 2.2 IP.