Blog Review: Aug. 13

Cadence’s Richard Goering interviews Kathryn Kranen about the acquisition of her company, along with the business of formal verification. Interesting tidbit: The combined company has more than 50% market share in formal.

Mentor’s John Day looks at Volkswagen’s upcoming all-electric Golf that will go on sale later this year in the United States. The new twist: VW has struck a deal with SunPower to sell solar panels with the car. How green can you go?

Synopsys’ Mick Posner cites a Harvard Business Review article that explains why hope is a strategy. Sounds like they cut the verification budget again.

Ansys’ Sudhir Sharma looks at the growing market for wearable electronics and the IoT. The IDC market projections are incredible—maybe literally.

Semico Research’s Michell Prunty says that swarm intelligence will take over our lives, starting with the smart home idea.

What subjects get the most readership? Cadence’s Brian Fuller unveils the top 10 most popular subjects for Cadence blogs. Guess what’s No. 2.

And in case you missed the most recent IoT and Security and Low Power-High Performance newsletters, here are some noteworthy blogs:

Technology Editor Ernest Worthman contends you’re never quite as safe as you imagined.

Executive Editor Ann Mutschler observes there are a number of security features for designers to leverage, but questions whether they strong enough to hold off attacks.

Rambus’ Frank Ferro observes that a better title for the IoT might be the Infrastructure of Things.

NXP’s Martijn van der Linden provides a glimpse into the next revolution in automobiles.

Executive Editor Ann Mutschler observes that breaking a complex problem down into more manageable pieces can make finding a solution much easier…even when it comes to power-aware test plans.

Synopsys’ Mary Ann White takes a deep dive into power reduction techniques. But are they the same for established planar, FD-SOI and finFET transistors?

Cadence’s Brian Fuller says all the usual business advice went out the window when semiconductor value chain shifted.

Mentor Graphics’ Rizwan Farooq asserts that power needs to be optimized at the hardware and software levels, which only can be done by simulating an SoC and running the complete software stack.

Ansys-Apache’s Muhammad Zakir finds that finFETs are forcing a distinction between using a sign-off tool throughout the design flow versus signing off at the end of a design.

Atrenta’s Larry Vivolo examines how to empower assertion-based verification through automation.

Rambus’Loren Shalinsky provides insights into how you can get a 40% reduction in power and a 5X capacity increase in server memory.

ARM’s Brian Jeff notes that designers need readily available and flexible IP that they can mix and match — especially in the smartphone and mobile computing arena.

Calypto’s Rob Eccles says there are a number of techniques for low-power design with different use cases for each — fine-grain techniques are useful for nearly all designs whereas coarse-grain techniques can be very effective for certain designs.