Blog Review: March 12

Arteris’ Kurt Shuler is sounding the alarm bell for the semiconductor industry. He observes that system OEMs are hiring their own chip engineers. Well, that should wake up someone. Danger Will Robinson.

Mentor’s Colin Walls points to a festering debate in the embedded software world about priorities and openness to learning new tools and approaches. Embedded software developers are a rather close-knit group, so this kind of discussion is unusual. Hint: Take note.

Cadence’s Richard Goering captures VC Jim Hogan’s message about future functional verification problems (the term du jour is “abundant chaos”) and five major trends that will drive it.

Synopsys’ Karen Bartleson is working with the IEEE to rebuild trust in the Internet. So what does Edward Snowden have to do with all of this? Check the video.

Rambus’ Jerome Nadel notes that as mobile gets redefined—and that means more than just mobile phones—architecture plays a much more important role. Think big architecture—as in the IoT.

ARM’s Dominic Pajak highlights a video of autonomous robots flying in formation that are inspired by birds. This may be technically possible, but will it ever be legal?

Mentor’s John Day drills down into Apple’s Car-Play infotainment alternative. This is just the beginning of the battle over who ultimately defines the car. What will distinguish one self-driving car from the next? The upholstery and suspension?

Cadence’s Paula Jones adds some show-and-tell videos involving noise-processing software to reduce background noise while talking on a smart phone. Reality check: You can always tell who’s using a cell phone during a conference call.

Synopsys’ Richard Solomon questions why we have to reset clocks and watches and all sorts of devices twice a year when at least some of them should be able to do it themselves. Toronto’s mayor weighs in on this one, too—sort of.

Real Intent’s Graham Bell interviews his colleague in a four-minute video about trends in automatic formal verification.

ARM CTO Mike Muller looks at where the next 100 billion chips will show up. Hint: It won’t be PCs.

Cadence’s Moshik Ruben digs deep into mobile protocols in this video about MIPI and some unexpected challengers.

Synopsys’ Parag Goel takes a deep dive into redundant simulation cycles with UVM VIP. Put on another pot of coffee.

ARM’s Karthik Ranjan has discovered a great graphic about how to get an engineer’s attention. Pie slice sizes may vary.