Two e-mails plopped in to the in-tray, both with the same time stamp
The first was headlined
ARM and Cadence Tape Out First 14nm FinFET Test Chip Targeting Samsung Process
The second
Samsung and Synopsys collaborate to achieve first 14 nanometre FinFET tapeout
Happy holidays!
… Read More → "It must have been a dead-heat"It’s always struck me that there seem to be two critical elements to sensor fusion. There’s the part that can be resolved with math – for instance, compensating a magnetometer reading to account for the tilt as measured by an accelerometer – and then there’s the heuristic part. The latter deals with, for example, deciding that your gyro reading makes no sense and deferring to the compass instead to give you a heading. And while the math in the first part is more or less universal for all players, the heuristics would provide … Read More → "Fusing the Little Details"
Karen has been feeling unloved.
That would be Karen Lightman, managing director of the MEMS Industry Group. After several years of MEMS taking a share of the attention at Semicon West, she noted a distinct “There’s a new kid in town” feeling this year in her blog, and this turned out to be a very well-attended blog post.
So as a follow-up, she arranged a webcast for last week that featured Peter Himes of Silex, a MEMS foundry, Mike … Read More → "MEMS: Unloved?"
There used to be a nice, clean division: digital chips were verified using the standard suite of digital verification tools like simulation and formal analysis; analog chips were verified by SPICE (for greatest accuracy). That simplicity is gone based on both the use of digital control of analog blocks and the simple fact that integration is now sweeping analog and digital together more often.
According to Berkeley Design, accuracy and productivity have been hurt by the need for most mixed-signal simulators to translate everything into Verilog-AMS before proceeding. While such translation might be possible, at the very … Read More → "Uniting Balkanized Designs"
A keynote at the recent MEMS Executive Congress by TI’s Ajith Amerasekera discussed, among other things, power and battery requirements for handling our increasingly digital, distributed world. The conclusion he came to – that there’s still lots that needs to be invented – isn’t particularly surprising, but some of the facts regarding how he got there caught my attention.
We talk about the cloud and the use of the internet to ship digital goods like movies as being an environmental boon – no nasty, soot-producing trucks rumbling around the countryside. Just … Read More → "Power Hungry"
A few weeks back, in Camels Have Their Role in Life I wrote about ADA https://www.eejournal.com/archives/articles/20120919-camels/. At the time I said that “within the next few weeks, there should be Ada 2012.”. Well, Joyce Tokar, the convener of ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG9 (Or the Ada working group) reported on November 29 on various Linked in groups, “ISO/IEC 8652 – Ada Programming Language Standard – Ballot was approved unanimously without any comments. 14 to approve and 0 disapprove. ISO/IEC 8652:2012(E) was sent to ISO … Read More → "2012 Camel"
Spirent is getting involved in the sensor world as it crosses with their series of GNSS (satellite navigation) simulators. Inertial sensors, compasses, and satellites can work together, correcting each other and providing backup when the satellite signal is too weak or disappears inside a building.
Spirent’s SimSENSOR MEMS is a simulator intended to allow testing and tuning of the sensor fusion algorithms that combine the satellite and sensor signals to provide a unified location verdict. In particular, they focus on dealing with noise (use of an Allan variance model is part of what they consider … Read More → "Location Simulation"
The concept of sensors isn’t new; they’ve been around for a long time. Some of them might seem big and bulky as compared to some of the new MEMS-based upstarts, but they’ve long been important for logging data and monitoring processes.
Many newer sensors are typically built with connectivity in mind, but older ones weren’t. And they’re typically analog. So Lantronix has just announced their xSenso analog device server, which allows you to connect an analog sensor to the internet.
It provides datalogging and remote … Read More → "An Internet Connection for Analog Sensors"
When last we talked with Cymer, they had just announced their PrePulse technology that gets more of the energy out of the droplets they blast with a laser. They had achieved 50-W output.
That’s only half-way to what’s needed for production, and, at the time, it was an “open-loop” result. That is, not something that could be repeated over and over in a production setting.
In my discussion with them at Semicon West, they now have 50 … Read More → "EUV Movement Towards HVM"
At DAC, there was a special event for first-time DAC exhibitors to come talk to media folks. Kind of a way for them to get better visibility. One company in particular caught my eye – a small firm called Esencia. They’ve announced their EScala Design Platform.
It’s actually reminiscent of Target Compiler, which we covered about a year ago in a piece on multicore automation. The idea is that they analyze a C or C++ algorithmic program (that is, not … Read More → "More Custom Cores"
