The 54th annual DAC event is fast approaching, so I hope to see many of you in Austin on June 18-21. The phrases Machine Learning and AI are growing in all areas of software, so I'm glad to see it appearing in more EDA tool offerings over the past year or so. One company that I plan to visit at DAC is Platform Design Automation because they offer both hardware and software ...

As I write there are multiple displays in front of me that use TFT, LCD or OLED displays:

• ViewSonic Monitors with 24" display
• MacBook Pro with 15" display
• iPad Air
• Samsung Galaxy Note 4
• Nexus 7 tablet
• Garmin Edge 820

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The semiconductor IP market continues growing at a healthy rate, and IP reuse is a staple of all modern SoC designs. Along with the acceptance of IP reuse comes a host of growing challenges, like:

• Increase in design files
• Increase in meta-data
• More links between design members worldwide
• More links between data in multiple engineering

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Semiconductor companies are looking for ways to keep their business profitable by managing expenses on both the design and test side of electronic products, which is quite the challenge as the trends show increases in test pattern count and therefore test costs. Scan compression is a well-known technique first created over 15 years ago that can be used to reduce the cost of testing ICs by compressing your test patterns so that you use less ...

The semiconductor, IP, Software and EDA industries are all focusing on the growing automotive market because of its electronic content, size and growth. There are long-time suppliers to the automotive industry, and also first-time vendors that are launching something new every week for electronics in automotive. So where do you go to get up to speed ...

Automotive ICs have to operate in a very demanding environment in terms of both temperature and voltage ranges, along with the ability to withstand g-forces and be sealed from the elements. Not an easy design challenge. For many consumer ICs we see output drive currents on the IO pins measured in mA, however in automotive if you want your IC to drive something like a DC motor then you can expect to see values in the Amp range, big difference. Engineers at an automotive IC design group in ...

I knew that the acronym for TFT meant Thin Film Transistors, but I hadn't heard that FPD stands for Flat Panel Detectors. It turns out the FPD are solid-state sensors used in x-ray applications, similar in operation to image sensors for digital photography and video. I'll be attending and blogging about what I learn at a webinar ...

Excel is a wonderful, general purpose spreadsheet tool that lets me organize and analyze rows and columns of data into something meaningful, however it doesn't know anything about requirements traceability for complex semiconductor projects. So why do so many engineering teams still rely upon Excel or custom, in-house tools? It's probably because of perceived lower costs, institutional momentum, and the typical NIH (Not Invented Here) syndrome. Safety critical industries like automotive, aircraft and medical all have standards that must be adhered to during the design process, and they share a common need - requirements traceability from concept ...

Last Friday I attended a breakfast seminar organized by SEMI in Hillsboro, Oregon with fascinating speakers from several high-tech companies: Qorvo, Intel, Oregon Angel Fund, Kimera, Moonshadow Mobile and Yole Development. I recalled that Qorvo was created from the merger of TriQuint Semiconductor and RF Micro Devices back in 2014. Glen Riley ...