Context is Everything – especially for autonomous vehicle IP

Context is Everything – especially for autonomous vehicle IP
by Tom Simon on 01-24-2018 at 7:00 am

GM has just announced that it will introduce a car with no steering wheel or pedals in 2019. According to their statement, they have already planned four phases of their autonomous driving system, and they will plan many more. However, before we jump into this latest car and not grab the wheel for a spin, it is reasonable to ask about… Read More


Webinar: ISO 26262 and DO-254: Achieving Compliance to Both

Webinar: ISO 26262 and DO-254: Achieving Compliance to Both
by Bernard Murphy on 01-11-2018 at 7:00 am

It’s near-impossible to read anything today about electronic design for cars without running into the ISO 26262 standard. If you design airborne electronic hardware, you’re likely very familiar with the DO-254 standard. But what do you do if you want to design a product to serve both markets? It looks like aircraft makers are increasingly… Read More


Safety qualification for leading edge IP elements – presentation at REUSE 2017 in Santa Clara

Safety qualification for leading edge IP elements – presentation at REUSE 2017 in Santa Clara
by Tom Simon on 12-06-2017 at 12:00 pm

To ensure the reliability of automotive electronics, standards like AEC-Q100 and ISO 26262 have helped tremendously. They have created rational and explicit steps for developing and testing the electronic systems that go into our cars. These are not some abstract future requirement for fully autonomous cars, rather they are… Read More


High performance processor IP targets automotive ISO 26262 applications

High performance processor IP targets automotive ISO 26262 applications
by Tom Simon on 11-09-2017 at 12:00 pm

The reason you are seeing a lot more written about the ISO 26262 requirements for automotive electronics is, to put it bluntly, this stuff is getting real. Driver assist systems are no longer only found in the realm of Mercedes and Tesla, almost every car in every brand offers some driver assist features. However, the heavy lifting… Read More


Seeking Autonomy

Seeking Autonomy
by Tom Simon on 07-24-2017 at 12:00 pm

I’d wager that if I mention autonomous vehicles, the first thing that you would think of would be autonomous cars. The truth is that we will see many other kinds autonomous vehicles in the years ahead. Their applications will range from package delivery to saving lives on the battlefield. Of course, to some extent they are already… Read More


Rob Bates on Safety and ISO26262

Rob Bates on Safety and ISO26262
by Bernard Murphy on 07-12-2017 at 7:00 am

Most of us would agree that safety is important in transportation and most of us know that in automotive electronics this means ISO26262 compliance. But, except for the experts, the details don’t make for an especially gripping read. I thought it would be interesting to get behind the process to better understand the motivation,… Read More


Safety EDA

Safety EDA
by Bernard Murphy on 06-23-2017 at 7:00 am

It takes courage and perhaps even a little insanity to start a new EDA venture these days – unless you have a decently differentiated value proposition in a hot market. One company that caught my eye, Austemper, seems to measure up to these standards (though I can’t speak to the insanity part). They offer EDA tooling specifically… Read More


DAC 2017 Review

DAC 2017 Review
by Bernard Murphy on 06-15-2017 at 7:00 am

DAC is coming, next week, in beautiful downtown Austin at the Convention Center. I’ll be there Monday and Tuesday, running around the exhibit area. If you haven’t yet got your plane and hotel tickets, drop everything and start looking. I’m guessing this will be as popular as it always is, especially given the venue. I know of multiple… Read More


Ada in the IoT?

Ada in the IoT?
by Bernard Murphy on 11-17-2016 at 7:00 am

For the great majority (I assume) of my audience, if you think about Ada at all, you probably think about military and aerospace applications. Using Ada in the IoT might seem like overkill – cumbersome, over-powered and entirely unnecessary. Or so I thought until I talked to Quentin Ochem of Adacore at ARM TechCon.

For those of you… Read More


Mentor Webinar Series: Integrating the Systems Engineering Flow

Mentor Webinar Series: Integrating the Systems Engineering Flow
by Bernard Murphy on 10-28-2016 at 7:00 am

Product lifecycle management is probably not the most gripping topic for most design engineers. You want to get on with architecture, design, verification and implementation. But if you are building products for any safety-sensitive application in a car, a medical appliance, avionics, railway applications in Europe – to name… Read More