Blog Review: July 24

Synopsys’ Taylor Armerding notes that while two Florida cities may have saved taxpayers millions by paying ransomware demands, doing so is likely setting up a ransomware tsunami that threatens other municipalities.

In a video, Cadence’s Jacek Duda digs into what’s going on with the upcoming USB4 standard and what will change compared to USB 3.x.

Mentor’s Colin Walls shares a few embedded software programming tips, including more readable code, dynamic memory, and C++ overloaded functions.

Rambus’ Steven Woo argues that future self-driving cars will require new generations of memory with significantly increased bandwidth to safely implement real-time decisions.

Applied Materials’ Llew Vaughan-Edmunds contends that silicon carbide’s unique properties make it excellent for MOSFETs in automotive applications as well as for solar inverters, though manufacturing challenges still persist.

Arm’s Brent Gorda shares some highlights from the recent International Supercomputing Conference, including a look at RIKEN and Fujitsu’s post-K system, Top500 rankings, and Nvidia CUDA stack support for Arm-based platforms.

SEMI’s Scott Stevens points to optimism for the industry’s future at SEMICON West, with the potential of quantum computing, open source models, big data, and 5G featuring in key talks and presentations.

ANSYS’ Chris Montgomery points out the industries where design failure mode and effect analysis, or DFMEA, is critical, the process it follows, and some of the common mistakes to avoid.

Nvidia’s Isha Salian learns about a project to use AI to help analyze texts in ancient Sanskrit and what makes the language so difficult for a computer to digitize.

And don’t miss the blogs from the latest Manufacturing, Packaging & Materials newsletter:

Editor In Chief Ed Sperling warns that the ongoing trade war will have lasting repercussions, and that’s not good news for the chip industry.

Executive Editor Mark LaPedus examines a new domestic player vying for a foothold in memory.

Applied Materials’ Niranjan Khasgiwale proposes an integrated PVD process system for emerging memory technologies that can deposit and measure multiple materials under vacuum.

Consultant Walt Custer predicts growth will return to the electronics sectors in late 2019 or early 2020, despite uncertainty in global business conditions.