Blog Review: May 12

Cadence’s Claire Ying points to major changes in PCIe 6.0 as PAM4 signaling replaces NRZ to help double bandwidth, Forward Error Correction helps maintain data integrity, and various improvements are made to power consumption.

Synopsys’ Samantha Beaumont argues that automotive sensors are a major potential attack point and addresses some of the key areas of sensor vulnerability and the challenges in securing them.

Siemens’ Boris Marovic checks out the aerodynamics of the Ingenuity helicopter, which landed with the Perseverance Mars rover and recently took its first flight, through simulations of its interactions with the Martian atmosphere.

Ansys’ Wim Slagter finds that simulation users are adopting more high-performance computing resources both on-premises and in the cloud and what that means for organizations planning to implement or expand an HPC strategy.

Arm’s Andrea Pellegrini and Ajay Joshi explain why the company chose the SPEC CPU 2006 benchmark to compare performance between generations of processors and how an older suite of benchmarks is still relevant today.

Coventor’s Joan Asselot provides an overview of piezoelectric MEMS, some of the challenges in producing piezoelectric materials, and shows a couple of the applications in which they are used.

SEMI’s Inna Skvortsova notes that the semiconductor materials market reached new highs in 2020, growing 5% to a record $55.3 billion in revenue with momentum expected to continue this year, with advanced node ICs, 3D memory architectures, and heterogeneous integration requiring more materials consumption.

Lam Research’s Radha Nayak explains why making silicon etch chamber components is a very different process with stricter requirements than making silicon ingots for wafers.

And don’t miss the blogs highlighted in the latest Automotive, Security, & Pervasive Computing and Test, Measurement & Analytics newsletters:

Editor in Chief Ed Sperling digs into the economics of reliability.

Arteris IP’s Kurt Shuler looks at the role of the network-on-chip in ensuring total system safety.

Flex Logix’s Vinay Mehta digs into how a flexible architecture can maximize performance in a convolutional neural network.

Rambus’ Thierry Kouthon explains why understanding AI workflows will help you recognize security risks and where cyberattacks can occur.

Synopsys’ Rupal Gandhi examines how automotive systems are transforming, putting more demands on a single point of potential failure.

Even non-safety related automotive systems need higher reliability than many other consumer electronics. Siemens EDA’s Matthew Hogan and Dina Medhat sketch out what you need to know.

OneSpin’s Rob van Blommestein spells out a method for ensuring that synthesis optimizations don’t introduce new bugs.

Cadence’s Avijeet Singh walks through the process of finding and fixing key signal integrity issues without learning complex signal-integrity tools.

Onto’s Woo Young Han zeroes in on the unique production and yield challenges of CMOS image sensors.

Synopsys’ Ramsay Allen examines the dynamic conditions that have the potential to make or break a silicon product.

Advantest’s Jose Moreira compares two ways to perform over-the-air test on antennas for 5G applications.

FormFactor’s Paul Owen looks at the design of a critical part of the eight radio telescopes that make up the Submillimeter Array.

Ansys’ Rick Petersson observes that electromagnetic simulation software is constantly advancing, ensuring it is relevant for the large-scale simulation challenges of today.