Blog Review: July 23

Mentor’s John Day says that within the decade you will be able to contact a real person from your car. Hopefully that doesn’t mean marketing people will be able to contact you while you’re stuck in traffic.

Cadence’s Brian Fuller says the future of EDA in the automotive market isn’t just about chips. Think security, software and cost reduction.

It’s not just SoCs that are going vertical. Synopsys’ Mick Posner observes that stacking boards sideways has some important benefits—and limitations.

ARM’s Brad Nemire runs through the changes in ARM’s ecosystem, including a new consortium to standardize wireless networking in the home.

Ansys’ Justin Nescott scours the industry for the top five engineering technology articles. Top on this week’s list: Google’s deal to put sensors inside a contact lens. This should add a new wrinkle to surveillance.

Mentor’s Colin Walls provides simple explanations for the confusing terminology in multicore systems.

Cadence’s Richard Goering interviews colleague Sean Dart, former CEO of Forte Design Systems, about what’s changed in high-level synthesis and what the future holds for this technology.

Breker’s Tom Anderson digs into test bench elements and how to improve reuse of IP blocks, along with what Accellera has been doing with UVM to improve it.

Mentor’s Robin Bornoff finds that for CFD solvers, mesh topology of cores doesn’t affect performance, and some minor changes can improve performance even for a single core. This is definitely something to tuck away in your bag of tricks for when you need to start mapping thermal profiles of stacked die.

Ansys’ Simon Pereira takes on multizone CFD and meshes, as well. This seems to be an industry focus these days.

Cadence’s Arthur Marris heralds the arrival of Ethernet in cars, 41 years after it was first introduced. This type of high speed is legal—and necessary.

And in case you missed last week’s Manufacturing, Design & Test newsletter, here are some standout blogs:

Executive Editor Mark LaPedus takes stock of the complex LED market and where it is today.

Technology Editor Katherine Derbyshire notes that definitions of process nodes will become less useful as time goes on.

Mentor Graphics’ Jean-Marie Brunet and Nancy Nguyen observe there needs to be enough intelligence build into tools to determine which cells require a GDS view.

Applied Materials’ Kevin Winston explains what’s behind the company’s new name and why it’s so significant.

Semico Research’s Jim Feldhan warns that the first half of this year was better than expected, but don’t count on a repeat performance this half.

Lithography guru Marc David Levenson examines the latest light research—mid-infrared microscopy, quantum cryptography and low-scattering waveguides.

SEMI’s Paula Doe finds that university research has spawned new startups across a number of leading-edge technologies.