Cycling is part of the overall fitness industry which is enjoying a surge of new semiconductor-enabled devices to help us measure our progress, so at CES 2016 there’s plenty of activity on this front. I’ll highlight some of the more notable new product developments from the show.… Read More
Author: Daniel Payne
Inventor of Netscape Looks at IoT
1995 was the year that a co-worker walked into my cubicle and said, “Hey, you have to see this new web browser and Internet thing.” I promptly installed Mosaic, later renamed Netscape, and began surfing the web with all of those interesting hyperlinks bringing me to new articles. Marc Andreessen was the mastermind … Read More
Tuning Analog IP for High Yield at SMIC
Analog IP is more difficult to design and optimize for a given process node compared to digital IP, so any automation for analog designers is always welcome. The engineers at SMIC in China have customers that design analog IP and often they need to know how to optimize it for a specific process, so I watched a presentation by Josh Yang,… Read More
Semiconductors and Conflict Minerals
Our semiconductor industry uses many different materials and chemicals in the production of chips, boards and electronic systems. But what should we do if the minerals like tantalum, tin, tungsten and gold are coming from the eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo where armed bandits are forcing workers against… Read More
Hyperloop: Faster Than the Shinkansen
In 1987 I made my first trip to Japan for business, then rode in my first high-speed train on the fabled Shinkansen (aka bullet train) traveling up to 200 mph on the way from Tokyo to Kyoto. Compared to the USA, our engineering friends in Japan have the most futuristic high-speed trains in the world. Today there’ s talk about another… Read More
Is That My Car on Fire?
I was kind of shocked when the service manager at our local VW dealership told me that one of the wires in the ignition system of my wife’s New Beetle had started to overheat, melting the insulation and becoming a safety hazard. Why didn’t a fuze just blow, protecting the wiring from overheating? We decided to quickly … Read More
Design and Optimization of Analog IP is Possible
Designing Analog IP is often referred to as a “black art”, something that only highly experienced craftsmen can produce using transistor-level techniques that aren’t shared outside of their closely held group of trusted co-workers. I’d like to suggest that Analog IP can be designed and optimized … Read More
Academia and TCAD Grow Closer
On my first trip to Austria for EDA business I traveled by car from Germany, and I couldn’t wait to see how fast we would travel on the fabled Autobahn. Oddly enough it was summertime and the Autobahn was filled with vacationing families driving cars with shiny, aluminum campers in tow, so our car only traveled about 60 mph, nothing… Read More
An Easier Way to Reach Design Closure for SoC
It’s really challenging to reach design closure of an SoC by meeting timing constraints, staying within the power budget, tracking progress, communicating within the team, minimizing the floorplan, maximizing manufacturability and eliminating hotspots. Most SoC design teams have EDA tools from multiple vendors,… Read More
Smartphone Trends Revealed
I’ve been using cell phones since the 1980’s and I’ll never forget my first one, the Motorola DynaTAC (aka Brick Phone). The data plan was paid for by my EDA employer, and it did make me more productive because clients, prospects and co-workers could get a hold of me by simply dialing, not having to go through a secretary… Read More
Intel: Pushing EMIB Forward: Design Methodology Insights with Synopsys Tools