Blog Review: Aug. 1

Synopsys’ Taylor Armerding explains the recent cyberattack on Singapore’s largest healthcare group, SingHealth. The “well-planned” attack compromised the personal information of about a quarter of the country’s population, including Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.

Cadence’s Paul McLellan looks at the factors that make China’s automotive market much different from the rest of the world and the big opportunities there for electric vehicles.

Mentor’s Colin Walls shares another set of tips for embedded software development, including why to use function parameters over global variables in C and keeping ISRs short.

Arm’s Rob Kaye answers five common questions on using virtual prototypes for software development, including how they differ from Instruction Set Simulators and whether simulation-based approaches are fast enough for developers.

A Rambus staff writer points out the new GSMA IoT Security Guidelines, a set of best practices adopted by a number of wireless carriers to help protect the IoT ecosystem from security risks.

UltraSoC’s Aileen Smith shares takeaways from the first Indian RISC-V Workshop, including the difference between Big Data and Fast Data plus why a vibrant ecosystem is necessary for RISC-V to be successful.

SEMI’s Serena Brischetto chats with Peter Weigand of Bosch Senortec on what users want to see in wearable devices and, with battery life being an important factor, the techniques employed to reduce power consumption.

ANSYS’ Sudhir Sharma takes a look at how Qualcomm uses thermal simulation to determine heat flow through a smartphone

Eindhoven University of Technology’s Roger Bosch dives into six common methods that can be used for in situ studies of ALD processes and reaction mechanisms.

For more good reading, check out the blogs featured in last week’s System-Level Design newsletter:

Editor In Chief Ed Sperling looks at why tool and IP vendors suddenly have gone quiet about an explosion of possible interactions.

Technology Editor Brian Bailey sees big upside in the end of Moore’s Law.

OneSpin’s Sergio Marchese contends that development practices for safety-critical designs have a long way to go.

Cadence’s Frank Schirrmeister points to new opportunities in the convergence of technology, architecture and application specificity.

eSilicon’s Mike Gianfagna finds it increasingly difficult to choose between an expanding array of events tied to new markets.

Synopsys’ Ruben Molina argues that timing models need to be rethought for more precise static timing analysis with less uncertainty.

Mentor’s Mike Fingeroff explains why traditional RTL design flows aren’t a good fit for rapidly changing computer vision requirements.

Aldec’s Vatsal Choksi pins the value of high-performance computing applications on how fast data can be transferred.

Arteris IP’s K. Charles Janac points out why on-chip networks are so critical to IP integration.