Blog Review: Jan. 22


Mentor’s Anil Khanna believes Nest’s approach should be incorporated into the entire power grid. The ramifications of that are interesting to ponder. Speaking of Nest, Cadence’s Brian Fuller looks at the implications of the $3.2 billion acquisition of the company by Google. Will Google get it right? Maybe. Synopsys’ Richard Solomon has come up with a new definition for New Year’... » read more

The Next Big Threat: Power And Performance


In the shiny world of consumer electronics and powerful computers, taking a grinder to the outside of a package may sound more like safecracking than sophisticated electronic code hacking. The reality is there is more in common than most semiconductor companies would like to admit, and the starting point often is just as crude. To no small extent, systems on chip have become miniature safes.... » read more

Blog Review: Jan. 15


Mentor’s Colin Walls digs into safety-critical sensors for cars, which are essential to the operation of a variety of systems in vehicles. The number of redundant sensors increases proportionate to the risk from failure, something that has been an accepted practice in mil/aero markets for years. Cadence’s Brian Fuller gazes into a crystal ball and concludes that while the semiconductor i... » read more

The Next Big Threat


In just the past year, tens of millions of Target store customers had their customer and credit card records stolen, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal were hacked, Adobe software had a security breach, Yahoo! was infected with malware, and Snapchat was hit with a bug that exposed user phone numbers. And this was just what was reported in the mainstream media. The threat, it turns o... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing And Design


Crucial.com reveals a surprising way to gain more time for improving one's personal health: fix a slow computer. A nationwide survey revealed that U.S. adults think they waste an average of 16 minutes per day waiting for their computer to load or boot up. Equating to two hours each week and four days per year lost to the wiles of a slow computer, it's no surprise that 66% of Americans say that ... » read more

The Week In Review: System-Level Design


Cadence won a deal with Fraunhofer, which licensed its MPEG codecs for Tensilica HiFi DSP. (Cadence acquired Tensilica last year.) The AAC codecs combine speech and general-purpose audio into a unified system, which simplifies design because it works at any bit rate. Sonics won a deal with MediaTek, which licensed its NoC technology for an upcoming line of SoCs. MediaTek, based in Taiwan, is... » read more

Blog Review: Jan. 8


How do you choose an embedded operating system—and do you even need one? Mentor’s Colin Walls looks at the options, and the reason why there are no simple answers. Cadence’s Richard Goering has evidence that Facebook is gaining in popularity for engineer. He’s not the first person to recognize this shift, but the big unanswered questions are, ‘What’s the average age of those use... » read more

Blog Review: Jan. 2


ARM’s Lori Kate Smith has been scouring the market for cool devices. Her pick: the Epic Giveaway wrist computer for runners. She says the only drawback is the 10-hour battery life, but if you can run that long and still have some juice left in your body you probably need a GPS, instead. Mentor’s J VanDomelen has been tracking orders from the United Arab Emirates’ and its neighbors for ... » read more

The End Is Near


Looking back is easier than looking forward, and looking narrow is easier than looking wide. In 2013, there were several fundamental changes. Change No. 1: IP is now a lucrative market. From Synopsys’ standpoint, it’s been a lucrative market for some time. But the acquisitions made by Cadence, beginning in late 2012, coupled with the push by ARM into the micro-server market and the flail... » read more

Week In Review: System-Level Design


Synopsys extended its FPGA prototyping board with a new version that is optimized for IP and subsystems. This is particularly interesting given the fact that Synopsys is one of the largest IP providers and currently sells subsystems based on its ARC processor IP. Among the new features are support for 4 million gates for software development and hardware-software integration, as well as synthes... » read more

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