Automotive Outlook: 2022


The auto industry is widening its focus this year, migrating to new architectures that embrace better security, faster data movement, and eventually more manageable costs. The auto industry is facing both short-term and long-term challenges. In the short term, the chip shortage continues to top the list of concerns for the world's automakers. That shortage has delayed new vehicle deliveries,... » read more

Manufacturing Shifts To AI Of Things


AI is being infused into the Internet of Things, setting the stage for significant improvements in manufacturing productivity, improved uptime, and reduced costs — regardless of market segment. The traditional approach to improving manufacturing equipment reliability and efficiency is regular scheduled maintenance. While that is an improvement over just fixing or replacing equipment when i... » read more

Blog Review: Jan. 5


Cadence's Paul McLellan listens in on the challenges Tesla sees in manufacturing batteries for electric vehicles at scale and the types of battery chemistries it are currently using. Synopsys' Mark Kahan finds out the launch steps involved with the James Webb Space Telescope and the role of optical design software in creating the new instruments for Near IR and Mid IR sensing. Siemens' An... » read more

Domain-Specific Design Drives EDA Changes


The chip design ecosystem is beginning to pivot toward domain-specific architectures, setting off a scramble among tools vendors to simplify and optimize existing tools and methodologies. The move reflects a sharp slowdown in Moore's Law scaling as the best approach for improving performance and reducing power. In its place, chipmakers — which now includes systems companies — are pushing... » read more

Industry Transforming In Ways Previously Unimaginable


Early in the year, everyone expected that the availability of COVID vaccines would signal the start of a return to normal, but that has certainly not been the case. Now the industry is taking a longer-term view about how to transform business, what is necessary for people to maintain their mental health, and how to create robust hybrid work environments for the future that do not discard the po... » read more

Who Designs Medical ICs


The medical chip market is heating up as sensor and processing technologies reach maturity, seeing off a frenzy of activity by systems companies and startups looking to plant a stake in a vast and largely untapped arena. As with any industry, there are a variety of business models, which can spread out the design burden over many companies or just one large one. This was limited in the past ... » read more

Batteries Take Center Stage


For any mobile electronic device, the biggest limiting factors are the size, age, type, and utilization of the batteries. Battery technology is improving on multiple fronts. The batteries themselves are becoming more efficient. They are storing more energy per unit of area, and work is underway to provide faster charging and to increase the percentage of that energy that can be used, as well... » read more

Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing


NASA plans to launch the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) this Saturday, Dec 25, on an European Space Agency (ESA) rocket. Mission-critical radiation-hardened components from IR HiRel, an Infineon company, will go up with the JWST. IR HiRel space-grade DC-DC converters, rad hard MOSFETs and other power control products are in the spacecraft bus subsystems, such as electrical power, altitude co... » read more

Blog Review: Dec. 21


Cadence's Paul McLellan points to Log4J, a logging utility with a new major vulnerability that could affect hundreds of millions of devices, what's being done to address it, and why the underlying problems may be around for decades. Siemens EDA's Ray Salemi continues explaining how to use Python for verification by checking out the Python logging module for pyuvm and how it compares to UVM r... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


Memory CEA-Leti demonstrated 16-kbit ferroelectric random-access memory (FeRAM) arrays at the 130nm node. It utilizes back-end-of-line (BEOL) integration of TiN/HfO2:Si/TiN ferroelectric capacitors as small as 0.16 µm² and solder reflow compatibility for the first time for this type of memory. The researchers anticipate it will be useful for embedded applications such at IoT and wearable dev... » read more

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