Why Does That App Make My Phone Hot?


By Adam Sherer Popular Mechanics examined this topic in 2011, focusing mostly on packaging and other physical conditions. “Poor signal, intense workload and battery charging” were quoted, but the verification engineer knows the part of that list that was glossed over—intense workload. The author of that article waved away that aspect, saying the operating system usually can handle the so... » read more

IoT Brings Power Awareness Opportunities


By Ann Steffora Mutschler Limited only by imagination, the “Internet of Things” (IoT) is breathing new life into many segments of the semiconductor industry that are losing hopes for growth in the SoC market. In virtually any vertical market space, from automotive to consumer, from industrial to networking, one can imagine the potential for what IoT concepts could realize including higher ... » read more

Hardware Accelerators Earn Their Keep


By Ann Steffora Mutschler Hardware accelerators have been used for years, but with the proliferation of multicore chips and SoCs their use is evolving. Multicore processors have reduced the reliance on hardware accelerators, but that doesn’t mean the number of hardware accelerators is shrinking. The insatiable demand for performance while also reducing power consumption means that acceler... » read more

Experts At The Table: Low-Power Verification


By Ed Sperling Low-Power/High-Performance Engineering sat down to discuss power format changes with Sushma Hoonavera-Prasad, design engineer in Broadcom’s mobile platform group; John Biggs, consultant engineer for R&D and co-founder of ARM; Erich Marschner, product marketing manager at Mentor Graphics; Qi Wang, technical marketing group director at Cadence; and Jeffrey Lee, corporate app... » read more

Too Big To Handle?


By Ann Steffora Mutschler With the insatiable demand for power efficiency today, the power management tasks have been pushed up into the realm of the software engineer due to the sheer complexity of the hardware design and the demands on the hardware designer to get their part right. Managing power properly in embedded software boils down to really understanding the application and how it i... » read more

How Secure Is Your SoC?


The Russian Federal Guard Service’s decision to revert to typewriters—machines that leave unique mechanical fingerprints—is a good indicator of just how serious security has become in a world dominated by electronics and pervasive connectivity. What’s less apparent is the growing threat at the SoC level—inside complex chips, between the chip and the board, and between chips on the ... » read more

The Week In Review: Aug 5


By Mark LaPedus According to a nationwide online survey conducted by Harris Interactive on behalf of Crucial.com, 36% of those Americans who experienced PC problems in the past six months admit they have lashed out at their slow, underperforming computers by using profanity, screaming and shouting, or by striking it with a fist or other object. Those who experienced computer problems also indi... » read more

Experts At The Table: Performance Analysis


By Ed Sperling Low-Power/High-Performance Engineering sat down with Ravi Kalyanaraman, senior verification manager for the digital entertainment business unit at Marvell; William Orme, strategic marketing manager for ARM’s System IP and Processor Division; Steve Brown, product marketing and business development director for the systems and software group at Cadence; Johannes Stahl director o... » read more

Next Phase Of Energy Efficiency Begins


Individual purchases and product rollouts by companies are difficult to assess by themselves. Sometimes they are isolated steps that have no context or connection to anything else—the proverbial toe-dipping exercise to see just how deep and cold the water is. Other times, they are the beginning of a huge market shift. In the mobile space—and increasingly in everything that mobile devices... » read more

Experts At The Table: Automotive Electronics


By Ann Steffora Mutschler System-Level Design sat down to discuss the opportunities in automotive electronics with Alexandre Palus, principal SoC architect at Altera; Aveek Sarkar, VP of product engineering & support at Apache; Mladen Nizic, engineering director, mixed signal solution at Cadence; and Stephen Pateras, product marketing director, silicon test solutions at Mentor Graphics. W... » read more

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