Safety is a big deal these days, not only in automotive applications, but also in critical infrastructure and industrial applications (the power grid, nuclear reactors and spacecraft, to name just a few compelling examples). We generally understand that functional blocks like CPUs and GPUs have to be safe, but what about the … Read More
Functional Safety in Delhi Traffic
While at DVCon I talked to Apurva Kalia (VP R&D in the System and Verification group at Cadence). He introduced me to the ultimate benchmark test for self-driving – an autonomous 3-wheeler driving in Delhi traffic. If you’ve never visited India, the traffic there is quite an experience. Vehicles of every type pack the roads … Read More
Mentor’s Approach to Automotive Electrical Design
Most of us continue to drive cars and for me there’s always been a fascination with all things electrical that go into the actual design of a car. I’ve done typical maintenance tasks on my cars over the years like changing the battery, installing a new radio, replacing bulbs, changing a fuse, swapping out dashboard lights,… Read More
Functional Safety – the Analytics
ISO 26262 is serious stuff, the governing process behind automotive safety. But, as I have observed before, it doesn’t make for light reading. The standard is all about process and V-diagrams, mountains of documentation and accredited experts. I wouldn’t trade a word of it (or my safety) for a more satisfying read, but all that … Read More
HCM Is More Than Data Management
While tracking Moore’s Law has become a more expensive and difficult endeavor in the HPC design, the mobile SOC design space is also increasingly heterogeneous and complex. Strict safety guidelines such as the ISO-26262 being imposed in the automotive applications further exacerbate the situation.
Looking closer into the … Read More
NVIDIA GTC 2018 Then There Were Three
If there was a central takeaway to Nvidia’s GTC event last week in San Jose it was this: autonomous vehicles are already operating or at least testing in virtual every corner of the planet including companies such as Tier IV and ZMP in Japan, and Pony.ai and Baidu in China. But two U.S. companies standout globally for the growing… Read More
The Good the Bad and Tesla and Uber
In “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” circa 1971, Gene Wilder plays a vaguely misanthropic Willy Wonka who leads the young winners of his golden wrapper contest on a tour of the seven deadly sins within his candy factory and labs. (Who can forget Augustus Gloop?) At one point, Mike Teavee, a television-obsessed… Read More
Stress and Aging
These failings aren’t just a cross we humans bear; they’re also a concern for chips, particularly in electrical over-stress (EOS) and aging of the circuitry. Such concerns are not new, but they are taking on new urgency given the high reliability and long lifetime expectations we have for safety-critical components in cars and… Read More
Mentor Leads Emulation Innovation
Publishing eBooks on FPGA Prototyping and Emulation really was an eye opener for me as a long time EDA and IP professional. Both markets are considered EDA in the traditional sense but they are very much in the systems business with a lot of IP. Both markets are also growing very rapidly and operate side-by-side with complimentary… Read More
Nvidia: What the Doctor Ordered
Nvidia has an affinity for taking on computational challenges. Whether it be diagnostic tools derived from medical imaging, mapping the earth’s core or defining the structure of HIV, Nvidia is there with GPU computational resources to amp up the teraflops and shrink the computing time. In fact, according to Nvidia’s most recent… Read More
CES 2025 and all things Cycling