Amelia Dalton

Sensors for Medical and Fitness

October 24, 2011

While Movea’s main announcement recently was focused on their MoveTV product, they’ve actually been working with so-called body-area networks for a long time. This involves the placement of sensors on various parts of the human body, to be used for different purposes. While one use is for motion animation, there are also medical and fitness-related applications.

In particular, it has found use in physical therapy, where the sensors can monitor weight loss progress and pinpoint issues. If you are looking for innovative was … Read More → "Sensors for Medical and Fitness"

Serial Protocol Chameleon

by Amelia Dalton

October 17, 2011

We recently looked at Tektronix’s strategy for their new Veridae acquisition, but we also looked more broadly at their overall focuses, one of which is on serial links. They recently demonstrated a platform for testing such links.

There’s been a tendency for test boxes to be confined to individual protocols or families of protocols; their main point here is the integration of numerous protocols in the one box. Specifically, they list as examples Ethernet, Fibre Channel, Common Public Radio Interface ( … Read More → "Serial Protocol Chameleon"

Bridging Digital and Custom Domains

by Amelia Dalton

October 17, 2011

Digital and custom (mostly meaning analog) design domains have remained stubbornly separate for a long time. It used to make sense: digital flows were used for logic chips; custom flows were used either for hand-crafted processors, for highly-repetitive circuits like FPGAs and memories, or for analog chips. You designed an entire chip with one flow, so the fact that there were two domains didn’t matter.

The difference in flows more or less comes down to one word: synthesis. Logic can be synthesized and auto-placed and routed; custom circuits can’t. Or, by design, aren& … Read More → "Bridging Digital and Custom Domains"

EDA is sitting nervously on the

by Amelia Dalton

October 14, 2011

EDA is sitting nervously on the side of the pool, dipping one toe in, pulling it back out quickly. The cloud is out there, calling… EDA is both intrigued and afraid.

More than just about any segment of the software industry, EDA has struggled through the years to find the right business model – one that would let them make reliable, predictable profits – earning a return on their development and marketing investment, and serving their customers well. We’ve seen a variety of attempts including perpetual licensing plus maintenance/support fees, term licensing, and complicated all-you-can-eat or remix … Read More → "EDA is sitting nervously on the"

Tool Company Becomes Cloud Company

by Amelia Dalton

October 14, 2011

Continuing with our ongoing coverage of EDA in the public cloud, there’s another company that isn’t just starting to make use of the cloud: it’s completely tied its identity to the cloud in a way that entirely masks the original value proposition of the tools it makes.

The company is Nimbic.

Never heard of them?

How about PhysWare? Well, you might not have heard of them unless you’ve been involved in the world of field … Read More → "Tool Company Becomes Cloud Company"

Jump-Starting Connected Devices

by Amelia Dalton

October 10, 2011

We looked at Imagination Technologies’ FlowWorld concept this summer. That effort put in place a cloud portal for a variety of services to be accessed by wireless connected devices.

They’ve now announced a new board they call the MiniMorph to complement that effort. It features a Toumaz Xenif TZ1090 processor, which integrates the CPU, WiFi, and audio subsystem (along with other peripheral support blocks) in a single chip.

The idea here is to take another step in lowering … Read More → "Jump-Starting Connected Devices"

I should clarify one thing here,

by Amelia Dalton

October 7, 2011

I should clarify one thing here, since I’ve had some offline correspondence about this. When discussing the use of emulation, I referred to needing it when running the “actual design.”

In my context (or in my mind) I was contrasting that to the architectural level modeling done prior to detailed design.

In other words, you should interpret “actual design” as RTL or gate-level, where the alternative to emulation is simulation (which is problematic when running through billions of cycles).

… Read More →

Yield Correlations Get Continued Focus

by Amelia Dalton

October 7, 2011

Yield enhancement has never been easy, but it just keeps getting harder as process technologies get more complex. Figuring out where you’re losing dice actually takes a lot of number crunching and correlation between widely disparate types of data.

First you’ve got your basic yield information as embodied in a wafer map. But one wafer doesn’t a trend make; it takes lots to develop the statistics to suggest where systematic problems might lie.

Isolating a particular type of failure, you can then do things like figure out what possible … Read More → "Yield Correlations Get Continued Focus"

Happy Ada Lovelace Day! http

by Amelia Dalton

October 7, 2011

Happy Ada Lovelace Day!

http://findingada.com.

… Read More →

Analysis by Braille

by Amelia Dalton

September 30, 2011

As a technology, JTAG (or IEEE 1149.1) has been leveraged a lot of ways to do a lot of things that may not have been envisioned when it was first developed. Its original mission, however, was rather simple: provide a way to test whether the board connection between two chips was intact. And, while individual components have a way of describing their internal chains via a BSDL file, according to the folks at JTAG Technologies, there is no such simple equivalent for the entire board’s chain.

So if you’re a simple repair shop without … Read More → "Analysis by Braille"