End-To-End Security


As the things we use every day get both connected and smarter, the sensitivity and potential damage caused by breaches in security becomes larger. With the new generation of connectedness, we saw a 368% rise in exposed identities last year over the year prior with 552 million leaked identities in 2013, according to the 2014 Internet Security Threat Report. Weak security is such an issue that... » read more

Blog Review: Sept. 3


Ansys’ Bill Vandermark flags the top five engineering technology articles of the week. A couple of these are unusual, such as e-mailing brain waves, and hoverbikes, which could really improve bike safety—as long as you don’t hit a bird. Synopsys’ Marc Greenberg looks at just how fast DDR4 can run. But what do you call it when you overclock everything? Is that still DDR4? Cadence�... » read more

The Week In Review: Design


Partnerships With an aim to drive adoption of software testing in Japan, Coverity, a Synopsys company said it has tapped OGIS-RI, a Japan-based distributor of IT solutions to partner with Coverity's software testing platform and OGIS-RI's open source license and vulnerability management tool. Maxscend Technologies has joined CEVA’s CEVAnet partner program and will offer complete solutio... » read more

Blog Review: Aug. 27


In the spirit of making a positive social contribution, and to recognize employees for their contributions to the local community, Applied Materials’ chairman Mike Splinter accepted the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. Nice job, Mike! With development work underway on the 10nm process node, and questions about getting there with conventional lithography, Cadence’s Richard Goering invites us to ... » read more

Blog Review: Aug. 20


Ansys’ Bill Vandermark highlights the top five engineering articles of the week. Check out the “Sprouting Baby Monitor.” This may be a sign of what the IoT is really good for. You can also use your cat (or dog or even your kids) to hack your neighbor’s Wi-Fi. Cadence’s Richard Goering says gaps may be narrowing between available tools and what’s needed for 3D-IC design. Now all w... » read more

Blog Review: Aug. 13


Cadence’s Richard Goering interviews Kathryn Kranen about the acquisition of her company, along with the business of formal verification. Interesting tidbit: The combined company has more than 50% market share in formal. Mentor’s John Day looks at Volkswagen’s upcoming all-electric Golf that will go on sale later this year in the United States. The new twist: VW has struck a deal with ... » read more

Server Memory: Should We Be Concerned About The Power?


After my last blog post, Server Memory: What Drives its Growth, I had a couple of people ask me, “If server memory has increased by so much in the last four years, what effect has that had on the server memory subsystem power consumption?” It’s a good question. In last month’s blog, I calculated that the maximum memory per CPU has increased from 18GB (2010, highest-end Nehalem 45nm C... » read more

Making Software Better


Gauging the energy efficiency of software is a difficult task. There are many types of software, from embedded code all the way up to software that controls various modes of operation to downloaded applications. Some software interacts with other software, while other software works independently. And some works better on one SoC configuration than another, or on one iteration of an operating s... » read more

Established Nodes Getting New Attention


As the price of shrinking features increases below 28nm, there has been a corresponding push to create new designs at established nodes using everything from near-threshold computing to back biasing and mostly accurate analog sensors. The goals of power, performance and cost haven’t changed, but there is a growing realization among many chipmakers that the formula can be improved upon with... » read more

Lensless Ultra-Miniature CMOS Computational Imagers And Sensors


We describe a new class of lensless, ultra-miniature computational imagers and image sensors employing special optical phase gratings integrated with CMOS photodetector matrices. Because such imagers have no lens, they are ultra- miniature (∼100 μm), have large effective depth of field (1 mm to infinity), and are very inexpensive (a few Euro cents). The grating acts as a two-dimensional visu... » read more

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