Blog Review: July 2

Mentor’s Nazita Saye has reservations about driverless cars. Sometimes it’s actually fun to drive—and sometimes it isn’t.

Cadence’s Brian Fuller is a bit more optimistic about driverless cars. He says that from the standpoint of safety, efficiency and environment, autonomous vehicles will be a big step forward—if and when some critical problems are solved.

And along the same lines, Ansys’ Kaustubh Nande questions why traffic deaths remain so high and what impact driverless cars can have as the number of automobiles on the road continues to rise.

Synopsys’ Richard Solomon unveils the company’s new candy-coated marketing approach—purple PCI-SIG M&Ms. These melt in your design, not in your hands.

ARM’s David Maidment a look inside Android wearables. Included are some photos of what’s underneath the cover—literally.

Applied Materials’ Connie Duncan points to a video from SPIETV about SADP—self-aligned double patterning—all the way through to quad-patterning and nano-imprint. These are tough problems to solve, for sure.

Mentor’s J VanDomelen looks at the prospect of printing parts on demand in outer space. That should save on spare parts storage.

Cadence’s Richard Goering distills down a DAC panel on FinFET design. There are no roadblocks, but the devil in this case is in the details—loads of them. And if you’re an AMS designer, the learning curve will be a killer.

Ansys’ Justin Nescott picks the top five engineering articles for the week. Check out the maglev pod transit system under construction in Israel. There are a handful of magnetic levitation mass transit systems in use in China, South Korea and Japan.

Synopsys’ Mick Posner discusses FPGA prototyping, PCIe and off-roading in the same blog. There are no issues here with work-life balance.

Mentor’s Robin Bornoff has replaced the term “complexity” with “cluttered.” It may be time to put some order back into the packaging process.

What’s the technology underneath Amazon’s Paperwhite technology? ARM’s Lori Kate Smith points to an intriguing video about optical tradeoffs.

Verification expert Gaurav Jalan attends SNUG India and finds more attention being paid to Shift Left and reuse. These aren’t new ideas, for sure, but they are getting more attention lately.

What does your sweat say about you? Apparently quite a bit, according to Semico’s Tony Massimini.

Cadence’s Moshik Rubin walks through the history of the PCI Express standard and what’s changed in a short video explanation.

Mentor’s Colin Walls answers some important C++ questions. Do you lie awake at night thinking about code bloat?

And in case you missed the most recent System-Level Design newsletter, here are some standout blogs:

Technology Editor Brian Bailey follows up on last month’s Supreme Court ruling that was logical but not particularly profound.

eSilicon’s Mike Gianfagna contends that confusion over what to build can be quickly resolved by having the right set of tools.

Mentor Graphics’ Jon McDonald finds it isn’t always obvious who inside an organization is best qualified to create blueprints.

Synopsys’ Achim Nohl digs into the upcoming ACPI standard and the slew of changes ahead.

Cadence’s Frank Schirrmeister observes these are interesting times, with EDA smack in the middle.

Arteris’ Kurt Shuler examines what really makes IP commercially useful—and harder to develop.