Three years ago my youngest son purchased a $17 smart watch on eBay, but then my oldest son read an article warning about how that watch would sync with your phone, then send all of your contact info to an address in China. My youngest son then wisely turned the watch off, and never used it again. Hackers have been able to spoof and hide … Read More
Electronic Design Automation
Webinar Recap: Challenges of Autonomous Vehicle Validation
Autonomous vehicle progress is in the daily news, so it’s quite exciting to watch it develop with the help of SoC design, sensors, actuators and software from engineering teams spanning the entire globe. Tesla vehicles have reached Level 2 autonomy, Audi e-tron is at Level 3, and Waymo nearly at Level 5 with robot taxis being… Read More
MEMS Actuation and the Art of Prototyping
I mentioned a while back that I’m really getting into the role that sensors play in our new hyper-connected world – in the IoT, intelligent cars, homes, cities, industry, utilities, medicine, agriculture, etc, etc. If we can think of a way to sense it and connect it, someone is probably already doing it. But there’s more to … Read More
Mentor unpacks LVS and LVL issues around advanced packaging
Innovations in packaging have played an important role in improving system performance and area utilization. Advances like 2.5D interposers and fan-out wafer-level packaging (FOWLP) have allowed mixed dies to be used in a single package and have dramatically reduced the number of connections that need to go all the way to the… Read More
Top Three Reasons to Attend the Synopsys Fusion Compiler Event!
As a professional semiconductor event attendee I can pretty much tell if an event will be successful by looking at the agenda. What I look for is simple, customer presentations. Not company presentations or partner presentations but actual customer case studies presented by name brand companies. For this event Google, Intel,… Read More
WEBINAR REPLAY: AWS (Amazon) and ClioSoft Describe Best Cloud Practices
ClioSoft has been working with the leading cloud computing providers running experiments on various EDA cloud architectures for a while now. One example of that was a project with Google I previously wrote a blog about, For EDA Users: The Cloud Should Not Be Just a Compute Farm. Since then, ClioSoft has also teamed up with Amazon … Read More
Webinar – IP for securing automotive systems
Modern cars have about as much in common with their predecessors as modern cell phones have in common with dial up land-line phones. Cars now are loaded with a bevy of electronics, some of which serve the convenience of the driver and others are essential for vehicle operation and occupant safety. With the introduction of sophisticated… Read More
ITC shines light on new Mentor Test announcements
The 50th International Test Conference was just held in Washington DC, where papers, sessions, workshops and announcements addressing the increasing complexity and expanding use of semiconductors showed that innovations in test are crucial to design and product success. Test methodologies and even the scope of test have … Read More
Synopsys Fusion Compiler Delivers ARM Hercules-Samsung 5LPE Design
There were many interesting presentations at ARM TechCon this year besides the keynote addresses by Arm, which were truly stunning for content and production value. One very interesting presentation was the talk given in the afternoon of Wednesday, October 9, 2019, titled, Synopsys Fusion Compiler for Next Generation Arm Hercules… Read More
Package Reliability Issues Cost Money
Advanced packaging technology is enabling “More Than Moore” scaling of heterogeneous technology die. At the recent EDPS Symposium in Milpitas, Craig Hillman, Director of Product Development, DfR Solutions, at ANSYS gave a compelling presentation, “Reliability Challenges in Advanced Packaging”. The key takeaway messages… Read More


Is Intel About to Take Flight?