Mobile Security And The IoE


As we climb that mobility ladder to becoming a mostly mobile society, every rung seems to expose us to more and more layers of security failings. Six billion of the seven billion people on this planet rely on a variety of mobile devices to shop, bank, interface with social media, monitor their health, and monitor their environment. Unless you are on the inside track and know better, one would t... » read more

New Directions For EDA


DAC is over and everyone is asking – what was the theme this year? It is sometimes difficult to make such a determination because quite often the theme has been there for some time, but suddenly appears more obvious than it did in the past. Some years it is a new product or class of products. The theme also can remain hidden, or disguised. As an example, people have been talking about the ... » read more

Get Agile


History repeats itself, but frequently not in the exactly the same place. The problems faced by system engineering teams today—rising complexity, shorter market windows and more issues involving interactions that affect everything from dynamic power and leakage current to electromigration and finFET design—mirror the kinds of top-down issues that software developers began encountering more ... » read more

UPF 3.0 Moves Toward Ratification


[gettech id="31044" t_name="UPF"] (Unified Power Format) 3.0 — the fourth incarnation in 10 years — is moving closer to the IEEE ballot process. Erich Marschner, verification architect at [getentity id="22017" e_name="Mentor Graphics"] and vice chair of the [gettech id="31043" comment="IEEE 1801"] working group, explained the working group is as close as possible to being on schedule for... » read more

One-On-One: Walid Abu-Hadba


Walid Abu-Hadba, chief product officer at [getentity id="22021" e_name="Ansys"] (and a former top executive at Microsoft), sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to talk about systems engineering and why the starting point is no longer the SoC. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: How do you define system? Abu-Hadba: It's everything. It's the entire product and where the p... » read more

Redefining Progress


After lots of wrangling over the whether Moore's Law is alive, dead, or languishing at somewhere in between, that discussion now seems about as relevant as the look and feel of Apple's early Macintosh operating system—an issue that back in the 1980s spawned a very public war with Microsoft. Today that argument is about as relevant as whether Betamax was better than VHS. Whether it's Moor... » read more

What You Don’t Know About Consumer Memory


I hear a lot of chatter about the memory markets and their fast growth. The question I like to pose to people is, "Which memory (DRAM) segment has grown faster over the last three years, servers or consumer?" The answer may surprise you. The correct answer, according to the latest IHS DRAM Market Tracker Database, is consumer. Since the beginning of 2012, the consumer DRAM market has grow... » read more

Apple Legitimizes The IoT


There have been plenty of reviews this week about the new iPhone 6 and the Apple Watch, both of which are either extremely cool or ho-hum, depending upon the disposition of the reviewer. But what’s really significant about all of this has nothing to do with the device. It’s a follow-the-money innovation. What made the iPod, and singlehandedly resurrected Apple’s reputation, wasn’t th... » read more

The Week In Review: Design


Earnings Mentor Graphics reported revenues of $260.2 million, non-GAAP earnings per share of $0.23, and GAAP earnings per share of $0.13 for the company’s fiscal second quarter ended July 31. “System design strength, particularly with automotive customers, drove the second quarter with earnings solidly beating guidance,” said Walden C. Rhines, chairman and CEO of the company, in a stat... » read more

Everyone Is A Programmer


There was a time when so many people didn’t know how to program their VCRs that OEMs stopped adding clocks because it was embarrassing to have them constantly blinking “12:00.” We’ve come a long way since VCRs. And that means all of us. While engineers have always enjoyed tinkering with technology, what’s changed is that everyone tinkers with technology now. Everyone programs phone... » read more

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