Blog Review: May 20

FinFETs change the equation for power optimization, says Mentor’s Vincent Lebars – and while companies are attacking some power gains, there is much more to be had doing datapath optimization within the place and route flow.

Cadence’s Richard Goering talks with Oz Levia about the future direction of formal and its integration into other product lines now that the merger between Cadence and Jasper has had a year to mature.

Synopsys’ Satyapriya Acharya explains how the AMBA system monitor can check the correctness and completeness of data as it passes through the interconnect and ensure that a transaction is routed correctly to its appropriate slave.

Barbeque season is just beginning, and there’s a watch to aid in cooking your porterhouse perfectly. But if grilling isn’t on the menu, Ansys’ Justin Nescott features plenty of other gadgets in this week’s top five, including smart socks for diabetics and an iPhone case that absorbs ambient RF energy to charge the phone.

Altera’s Ron Wilson takes a look at some of the implication for subsystem IP which can spread beyond the chip to the board. He presents a mixed bag of tradeoffs.

Interested in the software tools NASA uses to operate the Hubble telescope, land rovers on Mars, and design next-gen space vehicles? Good news, says the White House’s Doug Rand: the space agency just released a giant compendium of over 1,000 programs, available for free to industry and the general public.

NXP’s Martijn van der Linden sits down with European Inventor Awards nominees Franz Amtmann and Philippe Maugars to talk about the roads that lead to the creation of NFC.

“The Internet of Things is, to a large extent, a solution looking for a problem,” says Steve Taylor of The Technology Partnership. Rambus’ Aharon Etengoff digs into the Internet of Sensors and why it’s the resulting data that matters most.

If you missed last weekend’s Maker Faire Bay Area, ARM’s Philippe Bressy and Lori Kate Smith highlight some of the cool stuff featured at the show.

Keep it simple. Take time. And most importantly: test, test, test. Cadence’s Brian Fuller shares Dyson’s keys to successful product development at the Embedded Vision Summit.

The Synopsys VIP Experts blog continues its series on HDCP 2.2 authentication and RSA cryptography by delving into the first step of the authentication protocol.

Cars will be the ultimate connected device, says Ansys’ Ravi Ravikumar. But ICs in automotive systems face more stringent reliability and lifetime requirements than those in consumer IoT devices – and must deal with them under extreme conditions.

Plus, check out the blogs featured in last week’s Low Power-High Performance newsletter:

Editor In Chief Ed Sperling contends that the real cost of always-on devices isn’t so obvious.

Mentor Graphics’ John McMillan observes that constraints have become much more than just physical dimensions.

Cadence’s Brian Fuller finds there is no shortage of options when it comes to power, but that still doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy.

Synopsys’ Rita Horner zeroes in on how to choose the optimal SerDes PHY for your SoC.

ARM’s Bob Monkman looks at new cloud and networking infrastructures that are being developed to improve power and performance.

Calypto’s Anand Iyer offers a look at first-in, first-out design tradeoffs.

Ansys-Apache’s Chris Ortiz explains why designing for low-power efficiency requires a thorough understanding of switching scenarios and their effects.

Atrenta’s Mark Baker digs into how to improve the quality of RTL and why that leads to more predictable design convergence and higher design utilization.

Rambus’ Frank Ferro notes that getting to the cloud means a greater reliance on memory.