We're All Getting Older
Published. May 22, 2013

Hi All, I know this may be silly but meh! We're all getting older here, even you young ones! In saying that, I've never had the notion that I am old. After all, I play video games among other things and (you could ask my wife) I'm probably still considered ......

EDA Blog

Texas Instruments Unveils OMAP5432 Processor-based Evaluation Module
Published. May 22, 2013

Texas Instruments introduced the OMAP5432 processor-based evaluation module. The TI OMAP5432 EVM is a cost-effective tool to prototype software, evaluate applications and benchmark designs. It is available now for $329. The OMAP5432 EVM is ideal for human machine interface (HMI), portable data terminals (PDT), digital signage and medical monitoring end equipment. Read more: Texas Instruments [...]...

DisplayLink at CES 2013 – Docking Station with a Tablet
Published. May 21, 2013

Here’s some lost footage, I’ve just found from my visit to CES 2013 with DisplayLink. John points to ASUS, Lenovo, and HP Docking stations using the DisplayLink chip.  Most interesting, John Cummins, VP of Marketing, demonstrates the Dell Monitor with a Built In Docking Station used with a Tablet towards the end of this video.  [...]...

Blog Post: OpenMP - All aboard!
Published. May 21, 2013

With so many end products today relying on multicore DSPs for optimized solutions, I find it very encouraging to see that our multicore customers are leveraging the power of OpenMP as part of TI’s KeyStone software/tool suite. While some multicore engineers have learned to evolve single core programming through hand calculating and trial and error mapping of the software program, this approach is quite time consuming and will not scale well. I am reminded of a time that some of our younger...

Simon Phipp's Blog

Google's open video proposal closes door on software freedom
Published. May 17, 2013

In case the news from Google I/O this week left you feeling Google can do no wrong, there's a story no one is writing about that lread more...

Department of Energy Report Takes the Pulse of LED Savings
Published. May 16, 2013

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) just released a report that details the savings gained from switching over to energy efficient LED lighting by the U.S. market. The report, entitled Adoption of Light-Emitting Diodes in Common Lighting Applications, breaks down the 2012 cost savings of the following categories of lighting. Indoor lamps (residential) Indoor luminaires [...]...

Mocana Device Blog

What The Future Of Google Glass Might Be
Published. May 16, 2013

Google Glass isn’t yet available to the general public, yet it seems everyone is speculating on what it might mean once it does arrive. The Playground Inc. produced a short video showing several scenarios. Mostly you’ll be able to purchase things without much interaction. The segment on calling 911 and administering CPR seems extreme. Biking [...]...

FPGA Blog

CAST Offers Ultra-low Latency Video Encoding Option for H.264 IP Cores
Published. May 16, 2013

CAST announced an ultra-low latency video encoding option for their H.264 video encoder IP cores. The new option enables near-real time video transmission for streaming and wireless video applications, especially when coupled with CAST’s hardware stacks for fast, processor-less video processing. Read more CAST Offers Ultra-low Latency Video Encoding Option for H.264 IP Cores Twitter [...]...

Branden Williams' Security Coverage Blog

Garmin’s Missed Opportunity
Published. May 14, 2013

Businesses are moving faster than ever in this digital economy, and entrepreneurs build and showcase new innovative products or business models every day. The term that is thrown around to describe this phenomenon is called ‘disruption’. As an example, the iPod and iTunes Store disrupted the music industry in a way that forced companies to [...]...

Laptops and Desktops Blog

Android gaming on a x86-powered PC with iConsole.tv
Published. May 14, 2013

The new computer should outmuscle Android consoles using mobile chips, and may be able to run the Linux version of Steambox....

The Internet of Things – the Next Growth Driver, Enabled by High-Level Synthesis?
Published. May 14, 2013

The electronics industry has enjoyed constant growth while undergoing constant transformation. One of the most significant transformations has been the source of that growth -- from the PC revolution, to the rise of the internet, to mobile computing. The consensus is that the next growth driver is going to be "the internet of things," as many call it. Wired chooses to call it "the programmable world" in their recent article that lays out a vision and a roadmap for getting there....

John Day

Estimating wiring harness costs in seconds
Published. May 9, 2013

  Compared with, say, microcontrollers, there’s relatively little cutting-edge innovation in wiring harnesses, as indispensable as they may be. The wiring harness business, as Rick Burns describes it, is highly competitive and very cost-sensitive, with tight margins. Submit a quote a tad too high and you’ll likely lose the business, says Burns, Mentor Graphics’ product [...]...

Linux and Open Source

Barnes & Noble turns its Nook HD line into full-powered Android tablets
Published. May 4, 2013

Barnes & Noble seeks to revitalize its Android-powered Nook tablet line over arch-rival Amazon's Kindle tablets by adding Google Play and full Android app support....

Chris A. Ciufo on All Things Embedded

Intel vs GM: What’s In Store for Intel’s New CEO, President
Published. May 2, 2013

Today chip giant Intel announced outgoing CEO Paul Otellini’s replacement: he’s Brian Krzanich, former Intel COO and likely an Intel lifer. As Otellini bids goodbye at the annual stockholders’ meeting on May 16, Krzanich moves in as the company’s sixth … Continue reading →...

Electronics Engineering Video Blog Podcast

EEVblog #465 – LED LCD Panel Teardown
Published. May 1, 2013

Teardown Tuesday What’s inside a modern LED backlight LCD panel from a 27″ computer monitor? Forum Topic HERE...

#ENERGY: "How-to Shave Years Off R&D"
Published. April 30, 2013

Performing research and development (R&D) on new materials and architectures is the speciality of Intermolecular Inc. (IMI) whose High Productivity Combinatorial (HPC) platform just shaved two-years off LED-maker Epistar's production schedule, in return for paying IMI royalties on future products using its newly developed LED process technology: R. Colin Johnson @NextGenLog IMI's High Productivity Combinatorial (HPC) platform speed R&D experimentation up to 100 times using a proprietary technology...

All About Microsoft

Microsoft seeks beta testers for new Facebook for Windows Phone refresh
Published. April 30, 2013

A new version of the official Facebook app, plus Skype video messaging for Windows 7 are now in the testing pipeline, according to Microsoft officials....

Creating Virtual Platform Models
Published. April 29, 2013

One of the most common questions asked about virtual platforms is:Who creates the models?There are many sources of models and there are people who can make additional models (like Cadence), but obtaining some experience in model creation and virtual platform construction is a great skill to have if you are a software engineer, a hardware designer, or a verification engineer. Most companies providing commercial virtual platform tools have tools to create models. Cadence has a model creation tool which...

scalability.org

Having fun writing a presentation about molecular dynamics and big data
Published. April 28, 2013

Who’da ever thunk that MD simulations would start to become large enough to present IO and analysis problems? Way way back when the digital supercomputing dinosaurs roamed the earth, looking for problems to crunch on, I simulated gallium arsenide on some of these machines. I’d be lucky to get 100 time steps done, in a [...]...

Battery Could Provide a Cheap Way to Store Solar Power
Published. April 26, 2013

Combining aspects of high-energy lithium-sulfur batteries with flow battery technology can lower costs.There’s a promising new entry in the race to build cheap batteries for storing energy from solar panels and wind turbines. Stanford researchers led by Yi Cui, a professor of materials science and engineering, have demonstrated a partially liquid battery made of inexpensive lithium and sulfur. Cui says the battery will be easy to make and will last for thousands of charging cycles....

Comment on How to Rejoin a Closed or Private Facebook Group by Brigette
Published. April 14, 2013

It's genuinely very difficult in this busy life to listen news on TV, so I simply use internet for that reason, and get the newest information....

Comment on How to Rejoin a Closed or Private Facebook Group by Brigette
Published. April 14, 2013

It's genuinely very difficult in this busy life to listen news on TV, so I simply use internet for that reason, and get the newest information....

BCL Team Blog

Microsoft.Bcl.Async is Now Stable
Published. April 18, 2013

It’s done. About five months ago, we shipped our Microsoft.Bcl.Async NuGet package which provides support for the async/await keywords for pre-.NET 4.5 platforms, such as .NET 4, Silverlight 4, and Windows Phone 7.5. Of course, this includes support for portable class libraries as well. We believe we’ve baked Microsoft.Bcl.Async enough to flip the switch and mark it as stable. This might not sound like a big deal but it is the NuGet equivalent of shipping an RTM. C-3PO: "Sir, it's quite...

Signal Integrity

High-speed Digital Seminars in Twenty European Cities
Published. April 12, 2013

Register now for high-speed digital seminars all across Europe May-June 2013....

Signal Integrity

High-speed Digital Seminars in Twenty European Cities
Published. April 12, 2013

Register now for high-speed digital seminars all across Europe May-June 2013....

Tech Deseign Forums Blog

H.265 begins to flavor the video codec soup
Published. April 10, 2013

Two vendors have announced early adopter software implementations of the new video compression standard that promises an up to 50% bandwidth cut against H.264.The post H.265 begins to flavor the video codec soup appeared first on Tech Design Forum....

Wireless Sensor Networks Blog

New 3G Sensors stream photo and video to the Cloud for new Security and Military applications
Published. April 9, 2013

The new Video Camera Sensor board in conjunction with the 3G module for Waspmote allows to take photos and record videos and send them to the Cloud by using high speed 3G, WCDMA and HSPA cellular networks in the same way as Smartphones do. This makes possible sensor nodes send not only discrete sensor information [...]...

Be Stronger, Faster and Reign Over All with the AMD A-Series APU Advantage
Published. April 9, 2013

AMD announces special promotional offer for select AMD A-Series APU featuring Radeon™ Graphics and new SimCity™ PC game. AMD announced a special promotional offer that brings together the AMD A-Series APU, Radeon™ Graphics and the all new EA Maxis game, … Continue reading...

The Java Posse

Java Posse #418 - "Dickless"
Published. April 8, 2013

“Dickless” Fully formatted shownotes can always be found at http://javaposse.com Interfaces, classes, and API designBlog: http://graphics-geek.blogspot.com/2013/03/for-api-nerds-interfaces-and-inner.htmlDefault Methods: http://www.techempower.com/blog/2013/03/26/everything-about-java-8/Java Modules JSR (dormant): http://jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=277 Scala Traits: http://www.scala-lang.org/node/126 Comments in source code Life/work balance and being taken too seriouslyG+ post:...

Rands In Repose

Regular Audio Human
Published. March 28, 2013

I'm a rookie when it comes to listening to music, and chances are, so are you. Like me, you're just fine using whatever headphones were supplied with your smartphone. You know there are better headphones out there, but you think,......

Synopsys Invited FinFET talk at WMED: Q&A on FinFET variability and its impact on digital and analog circuits
Published. March 28, 2013

If you have been following my blog, you may have noticed a couple of posts on FinFET technology, mostly on the modeling side. I recently worked with the WMED committee to look at innovative subjects (especially for those spots after lunch time ). One topic we selected was the challenges faced by analog and digital [...]...

Brian's Brain

Two displays, one video output: A Matrox workaround works pretty well, but isn't perfect
Published. March 27, 2013

If only there was some way to convince a single DisplayPort output that two displays were connected to it, instead of pulling a twice-as-wide virtual-single-display trick. With that said, the trick that Matrox plays on the MacBook Pro is pretty convincing....

Digital paradigm breaking down
Published. March 27, 2013

Is the digital abstraction paradigm breaking down? It appears to me as if it is and the EDA companies have to hold it together to save...

Slideshow: Apollo engine treasures recovered from ocean floor
Published. March 25, 2013

In the following photos and video, we explore what Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos located on the ocean floor as he and a team recovered F-1 engines that helped power Apollo astronauts beyond Earth orbit....

CNBC – Samsung’s Galaxy Launch
Published. March 15, 2013

Had an opportunity yesterday to talk to CNBC about Samsung’s Galaxy Launch. The discussion appeared across two segments of PowerLunch and Street Signs http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000154498  http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000154490 Similar discussion with New York Times and USA Today...

Frank Schirrmeister Blog

Securing Invisible Things … or “Why Denial Works!”
Published. February 28, 2013

The opening keynote of the Embedded World conference in Germany left me with chills. No, it was not a grand theatrical performance letting me crave for more. It simply scared the bejevies out of me with respect to the safety and security of embedded devices, some of which I use each day. Luckily -- as in so many other areas of life -- the cure simply lies in proper prevention before bad things happen. And guess what, tools like our System Development Suite may be central to the answer!Stuart...

Green Hills Software

Green Hills Software Announces INTEGRITY Multivisor for Trusted Mobile Devices Version 4
Published. March 11, 2013

Advances include breakthrough 3D graphics and ARM VE virtualization...

DVCon 2013: Functional Verification Is EDA’s “Killer App”
Published. March 11, 2013

With another year of record attendance, DVCon has again proven that a functional verification-focused mix of trade show and technical conference is what customers need to get their jobs done.  Here are some of the some of the highlights I took away from this informative event:DVCon 2013 was a one stop shop for panels, papers, posters,live demos, and tutorials on functional verification* Great panels on Verification Planning and Drastically Improving D&VTwo panels at the conference provided valuable...

Paul Johnston's Blog

When you should wake up and retire your old software.
Published. March 8, 2013

In an internal meeting at the end of last month I heard a fact announced.  In the total worldwide licenses for Mentor Graphics’ software for Integrated Electrical Systems the balance has changed. There are now more Capital Harness XC seats than Capital H Classic. The legacy system, the last generation software is gradually replaced by [...]...

CEA Digital Dialogue

The Impact of the Internet on Healthcare
Published. February 22, 2013

Susannah Fox, the associate director of Digital Strategy at Pew Internet & American Life Project, discusses how U.S. adults are tracking their fitness, weight and health....

Stephane Boucher's DSP Blog

DSPRelated finally on Twitter!
Published. February 20, 2013

Hello! It's been a while since you've heard from me - and there are many reasons why: 1 - I've made a clown of myself (video here) 2 - I've been working on unifying the user management system.  You can now participate to the three related sites (DSPRelated, FPGARelated and EmbeddedRelated) with only one account (same login info).  3- I've been working on getting up to speed with... read more...

Logitech C930e Webcam, Business Video Conferencing on a Budget
Published. February 15, 2013

IBM and Cadence Collaboration Improves Verification Productivity
Published. February 13, 2013

Technology leaders like IBM continuously seek opportunities to improve productivity because they recognize that verification is a significant part of the overall SoC development cycle. Through collaboration, IBM and Cadence identify, refine, and deploy verification technologies and methodologies to improve the productivity of IBM’s project teams. Tom Cole, verification manager for IBM’s Cores group, and I took a few minutes to reflect on verification productivity and...

DVCon 2013 for Formal and ABV Users
Published. February 11, 2013

At the upcoming DVCon (in San Jose, CA February 25-28), Cadence will cover all aspects of our verification technologies and methodologies (full list of Cadence-sponsored events is here).  However, Team Verify would like to alert users of Cadence Incisive formal and multi-engine tools, apps, and assertion-based verification (ABV) to the following papers and posters focused on this domain.* Session 2, Tuesday Feb. 26, 9-10:30am features two papers:Paper 2.1, "Overcoming AXI...

DVCon 2013 for the Specmaniac
Published. February 8, 2013

At the upcoming DVCon (in San Jose, CA February 25-28), Cadence will cover all aspects of our verification technologies and methodologies (full list of Cadence-sponsored events is here).  Of course, Team Specman cannot resist drawing your attention to the many activities that will feature Specman and e language-related content, or be of general relevance to Specmaniacs.  Hence, if you are going to the conference, please consider printing out the following "DVCon 2013 Guide...

GreenTech Pastures

Smart grid player targets streetlight optimization
Published. February 6, 2013

A new partnership between Silver Spring Networks and Streetlight.Vision will create a new solution for managing public lighting infrastructure, parking meters and more....

Embedded multicore interview followup
Published. February 20, 2009

Had a nice interview and mention in an article by John Blyler. With regard to the issue identified in the story and video (coordination of process, thread, and vector level parallelism), I think there is a positive and a negative aspect for embedded developers.  The negative aspect for embedded developers is that much of the work for [...]...

Ed Burnette's Dev Connection

ZenBook Prime flunks blogging torture test, gets replaced by a MacBook Air
Published. June 28, 2012

The Asus had sexy specs and good reviews, but when push came to shove a temperamental trackpad led to its downfall....

Open Source Initiative blogs

FRAND and Open Standards
Published. April 25, 2012

Back in 2006, a detailed discussion at the Open Source Initiative led to the creation of a statement about what makes a standard open, and a set of criteria for determining if the requirement was met and a standard compliant. Both are very simple as well as fully explained. To save you the click-through, here's the OSI Open Standards Requirement and Criteria in full: The Requirement An "open standard" must not prohibit conforming implementations in open source software. The Criteria To comply with...

Windows Embedded Blog

Windows Embedded Keynote at SMART TECHnology World
Published. March 26, 2012

On Friday 23rd March 2012 Kevin Dallas, General Manager of the Windows Embedded Business at Microsoft delivered a keynote presentation at SMART TECHnology World, during the keynote Kevin is joined by Michael Allison, IT Administrator of Hillcrest Medical Center, Tom Romano, CIO of Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Jim Buczkowski, a Technical Fellow at Ford to discuss the emergence and value of Intelligent Systems Here’s a link to the keynote video - Mike...

iPhone 4S Power Efficiency Improvements
Published. January 27, 2012

This blog originally posted on the Low Power Engineering Community 11/3/11. http://chipdesignmag.com/lpd/absolute-power I’ve had my iPhone 4S for a few weeks now, and have gotten to know it pretty well. Mine is the 64GB model, mostly because I want to play around with the new 1080p video recording capabilities, and don’t want to worry about [...]...

June 2012 Security Updates are Live on ECE for XPe and Standard 2009
Published. July 3, 2012

The June 2012 Security Updates are now available on the ECE for Microsoft® Windows® XP Embedded with Service Pack 3 and Windows® Embedded Standard 2009. The list below applies to Standard 2009 only: KB2604121 - Vulnerabilities in .NET Framework Could Allow Remote Code Execution KB2656405 - Combined Security Update for Microsoft Office, Windows, .NET Framework, and Silverlight KB2656368 - Vulnerabilities in .NET Framework Could Allow Remote Code Execution KB2686827 - Vulnerabilities in...

Semicon2012 – EUV pushes out
Published. July 24, 2012

At this years Semicon in San Francisco, the focus on new items was the inclusion of MEMS, LEDs, Sensors and a start of the 450mm wafer movement, but EUV was still the “tech of the future”. While progress was made on the light sources for the imaging system, the challenge and costs of EUV blanks, [...]...

Embedded C Programming with ARM Cortex-M Video Course
Published. January 21, 2013

As part of my New Year’s resolution for 2013, I just started to teach an Embedded C Programming Course with ARM Cortex-M on YouTube. The playlist for this course is available at: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPW8O6W-1chwyTzI3BHwBLbGQoPFxPAPM . The course is intended for beginners and is structured as a series of short, focused, hands-on lessons that teach you how [...]...

Read BDTI’s Evaluation of Our Floating-Point DSP on Hardware
Published. February 6, 2013

Download this white paper to read a performance evaluation of Altera’s FPGA floating-point digital signal processing (DSP) design flow on 28 nm hardware by BDTI, an independent technology analysis firm. Also, watch a preview of the white paper today!...

Joel on Software

Should you launch at a conference?
Published. February 6, 2013

Should you launch at Launch? (Or TechCrunch Disrupt? Or Demo? They’re all pretty similar). This year I launched two major new products at conferences: Careers 2.0 and Trello, and both times, it was totally worth it. First, a little background. There are three popular conferences where you can launch new products: Launch, TechCrunch Disrupt, and Demo. They all work the same way: You apply. If you have a half-decent product that is genuinely new, you’re likely to get a spot. That said,...

Chris Gamell's Analog Life

Self Induced Stress
Published. February 1, 2013

I’m pretty good at stressing myself out. Not for any particular reason; normally just because I find it’s more productive than watching TV. How, you ask? Well, starting podcasts could be one. While they are exciting at the beginning, there is invariably some work that needs to be done. I’ll want to figure out how [...]...

John Coyne's Embedded Blog

AOpen Forum 2010!–it’s all about signage
Published. August 9, 2010

I’m here in San Francisco, CA attending the AOpen Partner Forum 2010 – Pretty good Turnout We’re here talking about Digital Signage and Retail Trends in general. There’s about 100 people here from all over the world who are thought innovators in the area...(read more)...

Soft Talk - Multicore and Parallel Programming

Sony VAIO Duo 11 up for grabs at LAUNCH
Published. November 8, 2012

Christmas has come early for one lucky attendee of this year’s LAUNCH: Future Gaming & Digital Conference in Birmingham next week. Intel Developer Zone (IDZ) is sponsoring the conference and will be running a raffle from its stand. The prize is a brand spanking new Sony VAIO Duo 11 convertible which does, well, pretty much [...]...

The Moth

How I Record Screencasts
Published. November 8, 2012

I get this asked a lot so here is my brain dump on the topic. What A screencast is just a demo that you present to yourself while recording the screen. As such, my advice for clearing your screen for demo purposes and setting up Visual Studio still applies here (adjusting for the fact I wrote those blog posts when I was running Vista and VS2008, not Windows 8 and VS2012). To see examples of screencasts, watch any of my screencasts on channel9. Why If you are a technical presenter, think of...

Daniel Cazzulino's Blog

Electronics 101 for kids: littleBits review
Published. November 5, 2012

I’m always on the lookout for cool toys that can empower my kids (9, 6 and 2yo) to be creative and break the mold of being just consumers of other’s ideas. I recently came across littleBits while watching a TED video of their creator. I was immediately hooked. It seemed like the perfect blend of [...]...

Gabe On EDA

Table Talk on the Emerald Princess
Published. January 25, 2013

One of the attractions of going on a cruise is meeting people I would otherwise never meet. This last cruise on board of the Emerald Princess offered interesting opportunities. My wife and I always choose late dining because it provides the best opportunity of sharing a table with repeat cruisers that have interesting lives. This is how I met Mary Lou and Hal. Mary Lou is a very successful marketing and promotion professional that works for a major TV network. She lives in Southern California....

CFD doesn’t mean Color For Directors

Sum of the Parts is Greater
Published. February 6, 2013

I live in a 3D world –3D simulation that is.  I remember when my work life went from 2D to 3D. I used to sit in a cubicle across from a software developer who specialized in graphics. He was a pesky lad. Whenever he’d get stuck on a particularly difficult piece of code he would [...]...

PCB Matters

Introducing DxDesigner 7.9.4
Published. February 6, 2013

Welcome! I am Gary Lameris Technical Marketing Engineer for Mentor Graphics. I’ve worked with DxDesigner since 1988 and have watched it grow from the independent Unix/Dos tool called PowerView and Viewdraw to a powerful multi-user schematic drafting program tightly integrated into the Expedition Enterprise and PADS layout tools today. Four years ago I moved to [...]...

PCB Signal and Power Integrity Tech Corner

Introducing HyperLynx 9.0: Fastest time to accurate results
Published. February 6, 2013

Over the past 16 years I’ve had the pleasure of being part of the development of HyperLynx and am excited about the latest release, HyperLynx 9.0 as we are simultaneously celebrating its 25th birthday and 10th year with Mentor Graphics. HyperLynx was founded in 1988 when cell phones were the size of a lunch box, [...]...

CallMOM

Buyer Beware
Published. February 6, 2013

In the June issue of Electronic Sourcing North America, there is an interesting article titled Today’s Smart Buyers Need Smarter Software.   We all thought software from Mentor Graphics was intended for circuit designers, manufacturing engineers, quality engineers, test engineers and manufacturing managers at all levels, and of course this is true.  So why did Mentor [...]...

Catalypto or Calypult?
Published. August 27, 2011

I was surprised yesterday morning – Friday August 26 – to read a John Cooley “intercept” indicating that Mentor Graphics had moved its Catapult C group over to Calypto in which they had also bought a major interest. Of course, this was a rumour, albeit grounded in inside information. Later that day the Reality-Based community [...]...

Denali Memory Blog

Cadence Video Demonstrates PCIe Gen3 IP Silicon Performance
Published. August 6, 2012

It is not often that an IP provider gets to showcase their IP performance in a real product demo. Those laurels usually end up going to the end product that uses the IP. But a recent Cadence video features our PCI Express (PCIe) Gen 3 core running flawlessly in silicon in a real system. We thought we would raise some eyebrows since, as of today, there are very few products in the market that utilize the full power of the PCIe Gen3 protocol, let alone those that have been designed using a commercial...

Kiran Bulusu’s Blog

Tips on how to do startup research in developing countries
Published. November 28, 2012

Tips on how to do startup research in developing countries 1. Make a slide or small video ( max 1-2mts) explaining what you want to research or collect data 2. Hire college grads from the relevant discipline or by their … Continue reading →...

Analyzing Distortion With Spectre RF
Published. December 18, 2009

Greetings,In the previous appends, we looked at using Shooting Newton Periodic Steady-State analysis to analyze analog circuits. In this append, we will look at using Harmonic Balance Periodic Steady-State, HBPSS, to analyze analog circuits. HBPSS is widely used for RF and microwave circuit design. However, designers often do not realize that it can also be useful for analog circuit design, in particular, when they would like to analyze distortion. As an example, we will simulate the Total Harmonic...

Webinar: SOI Gives More Performance Per Watt, And There's An Easy Path
Published. August 20, 2010

If you've seen any of the recent buzz lately around Silicon-On-Insulator (SOI), you'd know that it's an excellent option that can enable you to meet lower power consumption and die area targets without sacrificing performance or functionality. This is why Cadence, ARM and IBM have partnered to provide you an easy path to silicon with the SOI process for your digital design, including production proven software, design kits and IP.   If you're a design manager or engineer, and...

System Industry Trends - 2010 Highlights and What's Coming Up for 2011 (Part II)
Published. December 28, 2010

2010 was a very dynamic year for the electronic systems industry overall and Cadence in particular. In this set of blogs, I discuss some of the trends that started in 2010 and will continue in 2011. In part I, I talked about the key growth market, key industry challenges and the role of EDA. In this blog post (part II), I will talk about Cadence offerings addressing these challenges.Cadence System Design and Verification -- Addressing IP Productivity and System IntegrationIn order to be successful,...

Pre-RTL Software Development -- You Can't Get Your Product to Market Without It!
Published. May 23, 2011

It's been an exciting month for the System Realization team with the announcement of our System Development Suite. One of the new products, the Cadence Virtual System Platform, made its debut at the Embedded Systems Conference and has generated a lot of interest from our customers. DAC is right around the corner, and we'll be there with the latest demos of the System Development Suite, and a suite demo focusing on the VIrtual System Platform on Monday at 3pm, Tuesday at 9am, and Wednesday...

A Classification of ESL - High Level Synthesis Tools
Published. August 6, 2009

These days, there is a lot of talk of what the next design methodology for Digital Systems will be and how this methodology will be the replacement of RTL Synthesis. The term ESL (Electronic System Level) is used as a general term for the new wave of modeling and synthesis for digital systems. We have noticed that the term ESL is a very different concept for different people. It might mean a modeling approach, a design approach or a combination of both. In this blog we are not attempting to define...

Changing The "F" in RTFM to "Fantastic"
Published. January 12, 2010

Talk about unsung -- tech writers just don't get the credit they deserve.  They sit between R&D, customers, and support trying to capture the capabilities and intent of the software and present it accurately and succintly.  They record the "tribal knowledge" of the team so that new and existing users can function at their best, but then they hear that no one has read the f****** manual.Well one of our tech writers sought to change that and to do so not just for Cadence, but...

Some Final Real-World Assertions for the Holidays
Published. December 20, 2011

My last "real-world assertions" blog post seems to have tickled a bunch of people with my story about the racy narration at the historic Red Fort in Delhi. I've heard from several folks who have also seen the show and had a similar reaction. Just out of curiosity, I did a Web search and found a half-dozen or so other blogs and travelogues with comments similar to mine. Concluding my series, and in the spirit of the holiday season, here are a few final amusing incidents related to shopping...

True cinema TV’s, not 3D will drive future HDMI specs
Published. October 18, 2012

As the consumer electronic devices are increasingly becoming multimedia intensive, the evolution of connectivity protocols will play a key role in shaping the future of these devices.  With over 1150 adopters and an install base of ~2 Billion devices, HDMI continues to be the primary multimedia connectivity interface for the world of consumer electronics. The [...]...

YouTube Helps Engineers
Published. September 30, 2011

The channel that gets to close our series on how social media helps engineers is YouTube. The only social media platform that we never hear anyone complain about or say they would never use is YouTube. Why is that you ask? Because everyone loves video! If you don’t have a Facebook page, refuse to open [...]...

Conversation Central

The Ridiculously Ubiquitous USB
Published. October 16, 2012

Guest: Jeff Ravencraft, President & COO, USB Implementers Forum, Inc. Host: Karen Bartleson, Sr. Director, Community Marketing, Synopsys Inc. Welcome to the Season 3 premiere of Conversation Central. We have shortened the program and added video. Please give us your feedback. If your browser doesn’t support Flash, click here to download the show and play [...]...

Digital-to-Analog Converters vs. Digital Potentiometers
Published. November 18, 2012

Digital-to-Analog Converters (DACs) and digital potentiometers (DigiPots) are similar in many ways that make them both suitable for similar applications. For example, both DACs and DigiPots have a digital control (often SPI or I2C) in that control the wiper position, the wiper increments/decrements over a resistive ladder that creates a voltage output.  However, there are [...]...