The Week In Review: Design/IoT


Mergers & Acquisitions Mentor Graphics bought [getentity id="22268" e_name="Flexras Technologies"] for an undisclosed sum. Flexras, based in France, makes FPGA-based prototyping tools. The company was founded in 2009. Deals Sonics won a deal with Toshiba, which is using Sonics' on-chip network technologies and services for application processors targeted at smart appliances, industrial... » read more

What Will Change In Design For 2015?


This year more than 26 people provided predictions for 2015. Most of these came from the EDA industry, so the results may be rather biased. However, ecosystems are coming closer together in many parts of the semiconductor food chain, meaning that the EDA companies often can see what is happening in dependent industries and in the system design houses. Thus their predictions may have already res... » read more

Designing For Automotive


As cars include an increasing amount of electronics and electronics subsystems, the number of design challenges involving reliability, cost and power are on the rise. “Reliability tops the list of concerns for the design team because when you put these electronics in, you must know if they are going to operate efficiently by themselves," said Aveek Sarkar, vice president of product enginee... » read more

Unraveling Power Methodologies


When working on articles, the editors at Semiconductor Engineering sometimes hear things that make them stand back and question what seems to be an industry truth. One such statement happened last month while researching a different article. The statement was: Most designs are not top-down, but in fact bottom-up when it comes to power management. The most used methodology today is that the RTL... » read more

Image Sensor And Display Enhancements Drive Low-Cost Smartphone Growth


The low-cost smartphone segment is fueling the growth of the overall smartphone market. Smartphones are being adopted in emerging markets and are displacing feature or basic phones in developed markets. Mobile phone device manufacturers are closing the leadership gap with the No. 1 vendor – Samsung – by competing in both the high-end and low-end smartphone segments. See Table 1. Table ... » read more

New Challenges For Wearables


It was Dick Tracy’s wristwatch communicator that triggered the public’s appetite for wearable electronics. Introduced in a 1946 syndicated comic strip, the idea was so compelling that it inspired the release of hundreds of wrist-based devices ranging from walkie-talkies to calculators to GPS trackers, heartbeat and movement monitors. Yet despite the public’s fascination with this kind of ... » read more

Designing the Right Architecture


Designing the right architecture of a multi-processor SoC for today's sophisticated electronic products is a challenging task. The most critical element for meeting the performance requirements of the entire system is the interconnect and memory architecture. These SoC infrastructure IP components are highly configurable and need to be customized to the communication needs of all the other modu... » read more

Blog Review: Jan. 14


Ansys' Bill Vandermark flags the top five engineering technology articles for the week, leaning heavily on CES. The 3D scanner is intriguing because of the link to 3D printing. Mentor's Robin Bornoff returns to the drawing board to design a better water heater. Unfortunately, you probably won't be able to find one of these in your local Home Depot—ever. eSilicon's Jack Harding defines w... » read more

Productivity And The IoT


The market for devices that connect almost everything to the [getkc id="76" comment="Internet of Things"] is projected to explode, creating opportunities for companies that haven’t been traditional chip developers to decide to start developing devices. Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss this topic with Jack Guedj, corporate VP of [getentity id="22342" comment="Tensilica"] products ... » read more

Week 31: The Content Machine Is Well Oiled And Running


We are running on all cylinders working on the DAC conference program. Next week we have a three-hour conference call to review most of our invited content, as well as panels, tutorials, workshops and collocated events. Early February is the Technical Program Committee Meeting in Houston, where we will finalize the technical conference program. All our TPC members right now are reviewing submit... » read more

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