July 2012 – Page 2

A Buttable X-Ray Detector

July 17, 2012

Most image sensors receive light that has passed through a lens of some sort. This means that a large area can be photographed, for example, and sensed on a chip that is extremely small by comparison with the scene itself.

Not so with medical X-ray imaging. The target sensor gets a full-sized image. Not so hard for dental work, but more challenging for mammography or other full- or partial-body scans.

It’s typically hard, therefore, to provide a solid-state target that can provide seamless coverage. No matter how large they’ve been, they& … Read More → "A Buttable X-Ray Detector"

Analog Standard Cells

by Dick Selwood

July 16, 2012

The annual DAC CEDA luncheon this year featured Stanford EE Dept. chair Mark Horowitz in a discussion of analog abstraction. Which has always been a tough sell. Which they understand, which is why, at this point, there’s no selling.

Digital productivity has been supported by the existence of standard cells that can be bolted together into a circuit. No more transistor-level design. While that sounds nice for analog, it’s never passed muster because, well, analog is so complex. There are no standard parameters that cross all analog circuits, and n^th … Read More → "Analog Standard Cells"

Shocking Integration

by Dick Selwood

July 11, 2012

Last year we looked at Shocking Technologies’ innovative new ESD protection approach. In it we noted that they have software that can identify where in your board layout you should modify the traces to narrow the gap to allow shunting of unwanted voltage excursions (aka zaps).

At the time, this was a standalone effort. The results were useful, but … Read More → "Shocking Integration"

Atrenta Goes Functional

by Bryon Moyer

July 9, 2012

Atrenta says that their customers consider their SpyGlass tool to be the definitive answer on whether their RTL code is up to snuff. But that’s largely been on the basis of whether the RTL looks good or follows well-behaved, well-understood styles. It also looks at whether clocks are likely to behave well as they jump domains, whether the power is optimized, whether the thing is testable, whether the timing constraints are right, and whether the routing is too congested.

But they haven’t been able to tell you whether the actual RTL behavior is … Read More → "Atrenta Goes Functional"

Lithium Ion Parity?

by Amelia Dalton

July 6, 2012

We recently looked at Infinite Power Solutions’ THINERGY batteries and, no sooner had it gone to “print” when IPS came out with another release that, on the surface, seemed to describe what I had written – if you didn’t pay attention to the details. Fearing that I had talked about stuff that hadn’t been released yet (yes, I glossed over the details), I checked in to figure out what was up.

The deal is that there are … Read More → "Lithium Ion Parity?"

Intentionally Fuzzy

by Amelia Dalton

July 5, 2012

All software has bugs; every system has some kind of vulnerability. And the canonical way of dealing with them is to fix the bugs or tighten the code to eliminate system weaknesses. And then we patch our systems, as anyone who has been late to the airport and has shut down their computer in a last-ditch effort to get out the door, only to have the computer say, “Updating 1 of 32… Please do not power down or unplug your computer,” can attest. (Because, when Windows decides it’s time to update, well, there’s not … Read More → "Intentionally Fuzzy"

Windows RT: Not So Hot for Tablets

by Bryon Moyer

July 4, 2012

By now you’re heard about Microsoft’s big splash into the tablet market with Surface. CEO Steve Ballmer showed off two versions: one with an x86 processor running Windows 8 and one with an ARM processor running Windows RT (the same OS ported to ARM).

The announcement did two things: it annoyed the heck out of Dell, HP, Lenovo and just about every other hardware vendor that was also planning to make tablets. And it confused potential customers, because Microsoft didn’t announce any prices, availability dates, retail channels, or applications for Surface. All we know is … Read More → "Windows RT: Not So Hot for Tablets"

Tying Up the Missing Link

by Bryon Moyer

July 3, 2012

Methodics’s ProjectIC platform is intended to help manage large design projects by keeping the numerous different files associated with the design (so-called “views” – the unbranded sort, whose branded counterpart we’ll discuss in a couple days) in sync with each other. These may include RTL source files, schematic views, analysis runs, layout, and other design artifacts. They’re tied to each other by dependencies that Methodics builds.

One thing they haven’t had completely covered is test. They’ve handled analog test, but not digital. This was the … Read More → "Tying Up the Missing Link"