Blog Review: Dec. 10

ARM’s Brad Nemire takes a look at a variety of the latest smart devices. Check out the intelligent frying pan that tells you the temperature, the amount of time needed to cook something, and when it’s done. Check out the “Homey,” too. You can now give verbal commands to your home. Just don’t tell it to roll over.

Who needs paper? Or more accurately, who needs more than one sheet of paper—ever—when you can make it rewriteable? ANSYS’ Justin Nescott flags the top five tech articles of the week. There’s one for San Jose Sharks fans, too.

Mentor Graphics’ Mike Jensen looks at the total cost of failed parts, even if they’re inexpensive. And it gets much worse the deeper inside a device that part is hidden.

Cadence’s Richard Goering has compiled his top 10 blog posts for the year. A lot has happened in 12 months.

Synopsys’ Mick Posner only had to go back three months, though, to come up with an eye-popping graphic.

NXP’s Philip Lewer examines the two competing standards for home connectivity—ZigBee and 6LoWPAN (IPv6 over Low-Power Wireless Personal Networks.) The tech industry has a long history of dealing with competing standards.

Cadence’s Brian Fuller looks at the future of LPDDR4, which is poised to replace DDR4 as the high-volume memory of choice. Power trumps all.

Mentor’s John Day takes the 2015 Subaru Outback for a spin and is surprised by the level of detail creeping into automotive electronics, like the navigation system telling him to turn just before the gas station.

ARM’s Brenda Westcott sends a reminder to any interested party that the Design Automation Conference IP track is still accepting papers until Jan. 20.

Ansys’ Missy Ji has designed an improved peristaltic pump—one that mimics the body in alternating compression and relaxation cycles. You read about it here first.

And in case you missed last week’s Low Power-High Performance newsletter, here are some noteworthy blogs:

Executive Editor Ann Steffora Mutschler contends that the industry needs to figure out how to leverage all of the data that tools generate to make sure IoT devices are exactly targeted to their task.

Synopsys’ Alan Gibbons explains why processor performance cannot increase without making energy efficiency a primary objective.

Atrenta’s Bernard Murphy has created the high-level spec for what he believes is a possible killer wearable app.

ANSYS’ Sankar Ramachandran explains why power grid design becomes more difficult at advance nodes.

Cadence’s Brian Fuller looks back at what really happened in 2014 and what it means to the future of chip design.

Rambus’ Loren Shalinsky compares mobile and datacenter memory growth to the consumer market.

ARM’s Mayank Sharma observes that the cost of debug is now $312 billion per year, with some tips on how to lower that number.