Blog Review: March 16

A bacterium that chows down on plastic could be a boon to reducing our huge piles of plastic waste, in this week’s top five tech picks from Ansys’ Bill Vandermark. Plus, silicon photonics got one step closer, keeping an eye on new neurons, and getting around with magnets.

Can semiconductors be open sourced? Rambus’ Aharon Etengoff considers what that would take, the potential impact on the IoT, and the RISC-V project.

Cadence’s Christine Young presents a talk by Carnegie Mellon professor Dr. Xin Li on how machine learning can be applied to predict chip performance.

The latest group using hacking for nefarious gains: pirates. Synopsys’ Robert Vamosi checks out how a shipping company’s insecure cargo software led to targeted attacks on the open sea.

In celebration of Engineer’s Week, Mentor’s Nazita Saye introduces three influential but little-known female engineers.

GlobalFoundries’ Rajeev Rajan digs into the growth of the IoT and what market opportunities it creates.

Will EDA ever move into the cloud? Cadence’s Paul McLellan looks at challenges to it from both a security perspective and the massive amounts of data involved.

Over 95% of embedded-system code today is written in C or C++. But the world is changing, says Altera’s Ron Wilson, and language preferences will change with it.

ARM’s Paul Williamson has three reasons why, one day, all our devices will be connected.

NXP’s Jeff Miles debunks three of the most common contactless payment myths.

In his latest embedded software video, Mentor’s Colin Walls digs in to the communications mechanisms in USB.

Synopsys’ Hezi Saar considers where MIPI interfaces will be showing up in the coming years.

And if you missed last week’s Low Power-High Performance newsletter, check out our featured blogs:

Editor In Chief Ed Sperling questions why companies make certain decisions about technology.

Executive Editor Ann Steffora Mutschler looks at vulnerabilities in short-range communications.

Synopsys’ Alex Tenca points to a better approach for meeting power, performance and area objectives.

Ansys’ Muhammad Zakir observes that all data movement leaves an electronic trail.

Mentor Graphics’ Ellie Burns looks at how to solve interactions between real blocks using emulation.

Independent power architect Barry Pangrle examines where third-generation EUV will likely be used.