Blog Review: Jan. 14


Ansys' Bill Vandermark flags the top five engineering technology articles for the week, leaning heavily on CES. The 3D scanner is intriguing because of the link to 3D printing. Mentor's Robin Bornoff returns to the drawing board to design a better water heater. Unfortunately, you probably won't be able to find one of these in your local Home Depot—ever. eSilicon's Jack Harding defines w... » read more

Blog Review: Jan. 7


Ansys' Justin Nescott has extracted the top 5 engineering technology articles for 2014. Check out the turbocharged Dyson hand vac and the suspended animation trials. Mentor's J. VanDomelen looks at on-demand additive manufacturing on the International Space Station, otherwise known as 3D modeling and printing. It's a lot faster than waiting for a delivery. Cadence's Brian Fuller sits dow... » read more

Blog Review: Dec. 31


Mentor's J. VanDomelen zeroes in on the two most interesting discoveries from the Philae comet landing. So what was that "eerie cyclical clicking" sound? Synopsys' Ray Varghese digs into basic coherent transaction testing for AXI/ACE compliant interconnects. You might want to put on another pot of coffee. Cadence's Brian Fuller offers some deep insights into synthesis, verification and te... » read more

Blog Review: Dec. 17


Ansys' Bill Vandermark unearths the top five engineering articles for this week. Check out the ship-based laser weapon used to destroy drones. There's also a product called The Sphere that allows you to do strange things like answer the phone by tapping on the refrigerator. Bet you didn't think of that one. Cadence's Steve Carlson lists the top five things that can go wrong in mixed signal ... » read more

Blog Review: Dec. 10


ARM's Brad Nemire takes a look at a variety of the latest smart devices. Check out the intelligent frying pan that tells you the temperature, the amount of time needed to cook something, and when it's done. Check out the "Homey," too. You can now give verbal commands to your home. Just don't tell it to roll over. Who needs paper? Or more accurately, who needs more than one sheet of paper—e... » read more

Problems Lurk In SoC Boundaries


Interfaces always have been a problem, because only rarely does anyone have responsibility for them. Responsibilities generally are tied to functional blocks with the prevailing notion that if all blocks do the right thing, they will also behave correctly when brought together. Design teams that believe this eventually find out the fallacy of this assumption. To make matters worse, these are of... » read more

Smart Early ASIC Design Prototyping And Analysis


The Power Delivery Network (PDN) is the backbone of ASIC design. It is used to supply clean power to active circuits in the IC. Voltage drop on the power rails can result in degraded performance, making delivery of noise free supply to all design elements including die, package and PCB, a challenging task. With increasing competition in the market, delivering chips on time with 'first silico... » read more

Blog Review: Dec. 3


Mentor's Robin Bornoff zeroes in on some of the biggest and most frustrating causes of energy loss—the ones that have nothing to do with the intended task. In electronics, it's a question of how much power is consumed pushing around electrons and photons. Cadence's Richard Goering follows a panel discussion about whether we're really making progress in low-power design, where the challeng... » read more

Power Delivery Network Verification Coverage


Power grid verification is a challenge, and there are no industry standards for design teams to follow that will verify the power grid for power and signal integrity issues. In other areas there is typically a verification plan with checks to perform, and when successfully completed, the design is then considered verified to proceed to tape-out. Having high coverage in the power grid’s power... » read more

Blog Review: Nov. 26


Mentor's Nazita Saye has stumbled on a defibrillating drone that can rescuscitate victims well before emergency services arrive. That's a new one. ARM's Brad Nemire has found an interesting new Kickstarter device, too. It measures everything from heart beat to body posture with earlobe sensors. Cadence's Brian Fuller follows a speech by economist Austan Goolsbee, who is optimistic about t... » read more

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