The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Test and packaging In a major surprise, Cohu has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Xcerra for approximately $796 million. With the deal, Cohu will enter the ATE market. Last year, a group from China entered into a definitive agreement under which it would acquire Xcerra. But the U.S. blocked Xcerra’s sale to the Chinese group. Ironically, at one time, Cohu was reportedly lobbyin... » read more

The Future Of Mobile PC Is Here


The smartphone has fundamentally changed the way other types of computing devices are being designed. Focus on energy-efficient compute, portable form factor, long battery life, and connectivity has spread far wider than just the smartphone in your hand. Nowhere has this design influence been more significant than in the area of notebook PC. The era we are just now entering is that of th... » read more

Mobile Machine Learning Hardware At Arm


Machine learning is playing an increasingly significant role in emerging mobile application domains such as AR/VR, ADAS, etc. Accordingly, hardware architects have designed customized hardware for machine learning algorithms, especially neural networks, to improve compute efficiency. However, machine learning is typically just one processing stage in complex end-to-end applications, which invol... » read more

Blog Review: May 9


Mentor's Doug Amos explains the differences (and similarities) between verification and validation, why switching between engines needs to be simpler, and why the limits of verification are driving a growth in validation importance. Synopsys' Melissa Kirschner provides a primer on 5G and the five technologies that will need to work in tandem to bring the promised high speeds and low latency.... » read more

Designing Hardware For Security


By Ed Sperling and Kevin Fogarty Cyber criminals are beginning to target weaknesses in hardware to take control of devices, rather than using the hardware as a stepping stone to access to the software. This shift underscores a significant increase in the sophistication of the attackers, as evidenced by the discovery of Spectre and Meltdown by Google Project Zero in 2017 (made public in Ja... » read more

The Week in Review: IoT


Cybersecurity Arm this week introduced the Cortex-M35P processor with anti-tampering technology and software isolation. The company also debuted security intellectual property to protect Internet of Things devices from physical cyberattacks and close proximity side-channel attacks. Paul Williamson, Arm’s vice president and general manager of the IoT Device IP line of business, provides more ... » read more

The Week In Review: Design


M&A ANSYS finalized its acquisition of OPTIS. Founded in 1989, OPTIS provided software for scientific simulation of light, human vision and physics-based visualization. The acquisition boosts the company's automotive simulation portfolio with radar, lidar and camera simulation. Terms were not disclosed. IP Arm debuted the Cortex-M35P processor. Aimed at IoT applications, the IP combine... » read more

Challenges At The Edge


By Kevin Fogarty and Ed Sperling Edge computing is inching toward the mainstream as the tech industry begins grappling with the fact that far too much data will be generated by sensors to send everything back to the cloud for processing. The initial idea behind the IoT/IIoT, as well as other connected devices, was that simple sensors would relay raw data to the cloud for processing throug... » read more

Cache Speculation Side-Channels


Cache timing side-channels are a well understood concept in the area of security research. As such, this whitepaper will provide a simple conceptual overview rather than an in-depth explanation. The basic principle behind cache timing side-channels is that the pattern of allocations into the cache, and, in particular, which cache sets have been used for the allocation, can be determined by m... » read more

Blog Review: May 2


Arm's Greg Yeric looks towards the future of 3D ICs with a dive into transistor-level 3D, including the different proposed methods of stacking transistors, power/performance benefits, and challenges such as parasitic resistance. Mentor's Kurt Takara, Chris Kwok, Dominic Lucido, and Joe Hupcey III explain how a custom synchronizer methodology can help avoid CDC mistakes and errors in FPGA des... » read more

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