Blog Review: Nov. 20

Can you really heat your home office with just four candles? It all depends on where you put those candles, as Mentor’s Robin Bornoff shows in part one of this series. And make sure you check out the video, particularly if you’ve had a tough day.

Synopsys’ Karen Bartleson interviews ST’s Oleg Logvinov on camera about the IoT, which may be the biggest change since the Industrial Revolution. Wait until things start buying things. That will really shake up the economy.

ARM’s Brian Jeff provides an update on big.LITTLE, the right-sized, dual-core approach for different levels of compute intensity. There are lots of links if you want to learn more.

Cadence’s Richard Goering provides a user view of UVM sequence layering, a new methodology that was used by frequent blogger Gaurav Jalan to verify a highly configurable DRAM memory controller. This is an interesting approach to verification because it greatly simplifies reusability. Derivative chipmakers, take note.

Applied Materials’ Siobhan Kenney sheds some light on who’s doing good things with technology around the globe.

Mentor’s Felix Baum looks at embedded systems with virtualization. One interesting note is why engineers are looking at embedded virtualization. The unexpected answer for 46% of them: security.

Synopsys’ Mick Posner has added an EpiPen to his travel gear. There are photos to show why.

Cadence’s Brian Fuller highlights a keynote speech at the Semico Research conference by Arteris’ Kurt Shuler about the sandwich economics of chipmaking. Pickle?

Mentor plans to align its GNU compilers with the OpenACC standards organization, according to Anil Khanna. The emphasis is on simpler and easier to maintain compilers, which is a very good thing in the software world. On the flip side, this also adds another big supporter for OpenACC.

And in case you missed the most recent Semiconductor Engineering Manufacturing & Design Newsletter, here are some noteworthy blogs:

Mentor’s David Abercrombie compares triple patterning with something out of Star Trek.

Cadence’s Brian Fuller examines the changes underway in networking and what the IoT will bring to the equation.

Semico Research’s Joanne Itow looks into the high price of making a mistake with IP.

Blogger Mike Watts says there are three upside categories for 3D printing, but not all of them are useful. Check out the picture.

And SEMI’s James Amano rounds up the standards for 3D-ICs as a sign of progress.