Week 26: A Surge For Embedded At DAC


A few weeks ago I told you about the best kept secret at DAC—the fact that about 30% of our content at DAC is focused on embedded systems and software. This came as a surprise to a lot people and shortly afterwards we were contacted by Rich Nass who is the executive vice president and brand manager of embedded computing design at Open Systems Media and the former editorial director for ESC �... » read more

Signal And Power Integrity Cross Paths


Signal integrity and power integrity historically have been relatively independent issues, and engineers with expertise in one area generally operate independently of the other. But as more power domains are added to conserve energy and allow more features, as voltages are reduced to save battery life, and as dynamic power becomes more of a concern at advanced nodes, these worlds are suddenly m... » read more

Problems Lurk In SoC Boundaries


Interfaces always have been a problem, because only rarely does anyone have responsibility for them. Responsibilities generally are tied to functional blocks with the prevailing notion that if all blocks do the right thing, they will also behave correctly when brought together. Design teams that believe this eventually find out the fallacy of this assumption. To make matters worse, these are of... » read more

Energy Harvesting Makes Progress


The dream of a self-powered device has been around for a long time—thousands of years, in fact. The first windmills and waterwheels date back to ancient Greece and the beginning of recorded history. Self-winding timepieces date back to the late 1700s. The Foucault pendulum has been in motion in Paris, minus some brief hiatuses, since 1851. And it's been 144 years since two French physicists d... » read more

Blog Review: Dec. 3


Mentor's Robin Bornoff zeroes in on some of the biggest and most frustrating causes of energy loss—the ones that have nothing to do with the intended task. In electronics, it's a question of how much power is consumed pushing around electrons and photons. Cadence's Richard Goering follows a panel discussion about whether we're really making progress in low-power design, where the challeng... » read more

Debugging Performance Issues With Qt-based UI Applications


Interactive user interfaces (UI) are fast becoming a basic requirement in many embedded applications and Qt is a popular cross-platform application and framework to help develop such compelling UIs. As with any software application, embedded UI development also requires numerous debugging iterations to achieve the level of desired performance (e.g. non-laggy response etc.) This whitepaper walks... » read more

A Time For Thanks


Born and raised in Germany, Thanksgiving is not really “my” holiday but I am very appreciative of it. It is wonderful how everyone comes together and reflects on what they are grateful for. In my role as DAC general chair this year, there are many additional things that come to mind. First, the larger semiconductor industry is enjoying robust growth, which translates into increased demand f... » read more

Hybrid Verification: The Only Way Forward


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss the state of the industry for [getkc id="10" kc_name=" functional verification"]. The inability of RTL [getkc id="11" kc_name="simulation"] to keep up with verification needs is causing rapid change in the industry. Taking part in the discussion are Harry Foster, chief scientist at [getentity id="22017" e_name="Mentor Graphics"]; Janick Bergeron, fe... » read more

Blog Review: Nov. 26


Mentor's Nazita Saye has stumbled on a defibrillating drone that can rescuscitate victims well before emergency services arrive. That's a new one. ARM's Brad Nemire has found an interesting new Kickstarter device, too. It measures everything from heart beat to body posture with earlobe sensors. Cadence's Brian Fuller follows a speech by economist Austan Goolsbee, who is optimistic about t... » read more

The Week In Review: Design


M&A NXP Semiconductors acquired the IP assets of Quintic for its wearable and Bluetooth Low Energy business. The deal is aimed at IoT applications. Numbers Mentor Graphics' numbers hit a record in fiscal Q3, which ended on Oct. 31. Revenue was $292.7 million, up from $275.6 million in the same period in 2013. Non-GAAP earnings were $39.92 million, up from $37.29 million in the same per... » read more

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