Blog Review: April 27

Siemens’ Joseph Dailey and Jake Wiltgen dispel misunderstandings around safety qualification of software tools and point to some of the safety issues that could lead to schedule delays and additional costs.

Synopsys’ Mark Kahan explains the testing that went into creating parts of the James Webb Space Telescope and key questions that were asked to ensure the mission could be successful even if problems occurred in the highly complex telescope.

Cadence’s The Prakashian explores a scalable signal processing architecture for TWS earbuds and how they can economically support always-on and active modes of operation to maximize battery life.

Impinj’s Carl Brasek and Arm’s Will Yuan and Andrew Dunn argue that RAIN RFID could be used to connect trillions of everyday, unpowered items and track them throughout the lifecycle.

Ansys’ Curt Chan chats with Ewan Craig of Connect Everything Aerospace about building 3D printed rocket engines for increasing industrialization of space flight.

The ESD Alliance’s Bob Smith chats with Simon Butler of Perforce about a recent survey of semiconductor design professionals that highlighted the importance of component-based design and increasing need for co-design and validation of analog, mixed-signal, and digital components.

Intel Labs’ Gadi Singer points to a number of fundamental limitations inherent to deep learning must be overcome so that AI can more fully realize its potential, including model efficiency, robustness, and scaling.

Applied Materials’ Uday Mitra finds that 50% of logic density improvements at the 3nm node are from classic 2D scaling while the other 50% are from design technology co-optimization.

And don’t miss the blogs featured in the latest Manufacturing, Packaging & Materials newsletter:

Amkor’s Knowlton Olmstead explains how the high temperature range required of automotive electronics puts greater thermomechanical stresses on packages.

Coventor’s Assawer Soussou looks at using a semi-damascene approach with self-aligned patterning to address upcoming scaling challenges.

eBeam Initiative’s Jan Willis finds that inspection and repair are top priorities for wide-scale adoption of curvilinear photomasks.

Lam Research’s Tim Archer suggests ways the government could strengthen the U.S. semiconductor ecosystem.

ESD Alliance’s Bob Smith looks at the growing adoption of multi-beam mask writers and contour-based metrology.

Brewer Science’s Tom Brown lays out the keys to encouraging a team’s shared vision of success.