New Thermal Issues Emerge


Thermal monitoring is becoming more critical as gate density continues to increase at each new node and as chips are developed for safety critical markets such as automotive. This may sound counterintuitive because the whole point of device scaling is to increase gate density. But at 10/7 and 7/5nm, static current leakage is becoming a bigger issue, raising questions about how long [getkc id... » read more

Driving By Ethernet


The race to add more sophisticated and safety-critical electronics into cars is forcing carmakers to revisit the communications systems within increasingly electrified and connected vehicles. Until very recently, communication between components within a vehicle was simplistic, and communication between vehicles was non-existent. All of that is changing quickly. Rapid and secure communicatio... » read more

Blog Review: Nov. 29


ANSYS' Robert Harwood offers a reminder that autonomous and assisted driving technology are still very much works in progress, and flawed ones at that. It will take an estimated 5 billion to 10 billion road miles to effectively train self-driving algorithms. So far, Google has logged about 3.5 million miles. Along the same lines, Mentor's Paul Johnston takes a look at the electric car market... » read more

Week In Review: Design


Acquisitions Marvell signed a definitive agreement to buy Cavium for roughly $6 billion. The deal is expected to close in mid-2018. The Cavium deal fits squarely on the cloud side and gives Marvell a much bigger reach into enterprise networking and infrastructure, as well as some developing markets. Siemens paid an undisclosed price to buy Solido Design Automation, which tracks variation i... » read more

Drones, Augmented Reality, UHD TV


New markets for multimedia and high-definition video chips are quickly becoming the next wave fueling the electronics industry. One market that demonstrates a mega-appetite for electronics is the drone market. The main IC components in drones that require exhaustive verification are the video capture circuitry and data collection components that either store data in-system or upload that data t... » read more

The 2017 International Test Conference


Machine learning is a hot topic at many technical conferences this year. It will be true at the upcoming International Test Conference, which opens near the end of this month in Fort Worth, Texas. On Sunday, October 29, there are two tutorials devoted to machine learning. Monday, October 30, will have one tutorial related to the topic. The conference gets fully under way on Halloween, wit... » read more

Fusing CMOS IC And MEMS Design For IoT Edge Devices


Creating a sensor-based IoT edge device is challenging, due to the multiple design domains involved (Analog, digital, RF, and MEMS). But, creating an edge device that combines the electronics using the traditional CMOS IC flow and a MEMS sensor on the same silicon die can seem impossible. In fact, many IoT edge devices combine multiple dies in a single package, separating electronics from the M... » read more

Frontloading CFD-Required Technologies


Today, manufacturing product design cycles need to get shorter and shorter as either new or increased numbers of products get to the market faster. In the automotive industry for example, with either facelifts to existing car models, or the next generation of the model appearing almost every 3-4 years, and an increasing number of new models appearing on the market, the demand on engineering des... » read more

Using CNNs To Speed Up Systems


Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) are becoming one of the key differentiators in system performance, reversing a decades-old trend that equated speed with processor clock frequencies, the number of transistors, and the instruction set architecture. Even with today's smartphones and PCs, it's difficult for users to differentiate between processors with 6, 8 or 16 cores. But as the amount o... » read more

The Rising Value Of Data


The volume of data being generated by a spectrum of devices continues to skyrocket. Now the question is what can be done with that data. By Cisco's estimates, traffic on the Internet will be 3.3 zetabytes per year by 2021, up from 1.2 zetabytes in 2016. And if that isn't enough, the flow of data isn't consistent. Traffic on the busiest 60-minute period in a day increased 51% in 2016, compare... » read more

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