Blog Review: Oct. 23

It was a good week for good questions. Cadence’s Brian Fuller asks what applications dream about—or rather what’s their potential. In the context of technology development, that’s worth pondering.

Mentor’s Mike Jensen asks what will you be remembered for. There are a couple other important addendums to that, such as how long you will be remembered. And perhaps even more important, why and by whom?

Synopsys’ Mick Posner is being quarantined with a bad case of interfaces. This is like smaller, faster spots with no fever.

Applied Materials’ Kerry Cunningham sheds some light on interesting new materials—metal oxide and low-temperature polysilicon—to reduce power in thin-film transistors. The new buzzword is amorphous metal oxide TFTs, which in layman’s terms are roughly equivalent to longer battery life with better screen resolution.

ARM’s David Kilday is playing with smart bricks and robots solving Rubik’s Cube. Robots probably can do that in the dark.

Semico Research’s Jim Feldhan calls IP subsystems a catalyst for leading-edge design enablement. The interest in this approach is certainly changing as time-to-market pressures increase. All of the major IP vendors are looking at this as a huge opportunity.

Mentor’s Dennis Brophy points to an IEEE Standards Association symposium on EDA interoperability. Check out the lunchtime panel.

Cadence’s Richard Goering goes back to the future with the EDA consortium. Check out the photo gallery.  Goering also follows the design challenges in analog/mixed signal interfaces, including the challenges of scaling.

And in case you missed last week’s Manufacturing & Design Newsletter, here are some noteworthy blogs:

Mentor’s Jean-Marie Brunet notes that while progress is being made in automated fixes during place and route, most solutions rely on proprietary verification decks.

SEMI’s Dan Tracy digs into the current investments in flash, LED and MEMS in Japan.

Semico Research’s Rich Wawrzyniak cautions that there are some challenges to resolve before hockey-stick growth can occur in the IP world.

Litho expert Marc David Levenson gets a glimpse of future laser applications at the Stanford Photonics Research Center.

And Cadence’s Brian Fuller offers a convincing argument for why 28nm will be a viable node for a very long time to come.