Amelia Dalton

Between Driver and Fusion

July 20, 2012

I recently got a chance to talk with Hillcrest Labs, another big mover in the motion market. In fact, their pedigree sounds remarkably like that of Movea, whom we’ve looked at in the past: starting with interactive TV and transitioning to broader motion.

They’ve gone on to develop a gesture library (released, but, to date, un-officially-announced) that includes more than 50 gestures, including the typical control gestures, numerals, letters, cardinal directions, and rotations.

We discussed the … Read More → "Between Driver and Fusion"

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"

Fast and Accurate?

by Amelia Dalton

June 28, 2012

It’s a song as old as time: if the tool takes too long to run, then run a less accurate version early on, and just use the accurate version at the end.

In other words, speed comes at the expense of accuracy.

So I have to say that I was a bit confused and suspicious when Atrenta claimed that their new Fast Lint didn’t sacrifice any accuracy. A conversation with their Mike Gianfagna cleared the picture up a bit.

You see, Atrenta says that they live and breathe by … Read More → "Fast and Accurate?"

Virtualizer and HAPS Shake Hands

by Amelia Dalton

June 15, 2012

Numerous systems tend to get used for verifying SoCs, and, with software now in the picture, the range is extended even further. We’ve talked before about the use of simulation, virtual prototypes, emulation, and prototyping as ways of getting both hardware and software to work, and to work together. Including their unification.

Synopsys recently took a move towards unification by bringing their Virtualizer virtual platform tool and their HAPS prototyping tool closer together. What this is means is that a design can … Read More → "Virtualizer and HAPS Shake Hands"

The Elusive Trillion

by Amelia Dalton

June 1, 2012

The MEMS industry held a couple of interesting conferences last week. A number of noteworthy things came from them, which I’ll be covering over a few posts here. But, while it wasn’t my major takeaway from the events, there was one high-level aspect that I found rather unusual in this type of environment, where group-think tends to drive people on inexorably – even if it ends up taking them over a cliff like so many buffalo.

The theme of this year’s MEPTEC conference was clearly about getting to a trillion. Dollars … Read More → "The Elusive Trillion"

2 Spicey?

by Amelia Dalton

May 25, 2012

Tanner just announced the integration of Berkeley Design Automation’s (BDA’s) FastSPICE into their flow. You may remember Tanner as a company that does things their own way, offering a full suite of tools for custom design. Including their own T-SPICE.

And their own T-SPICE doesn’t seem to be going away; it’s not being replaced by FastSPICE. I got a chance to talk about that with Vice President of Marketing and Business Strategy John Zuk to … Read More → "2 Spicey?"

Graphene Quilts

by Amelia Dalton

May 10, 2012

A while back we looked at wide bandgap materials like GaN when used for power devices, but, along with power comes heat and the need for it to be dissipated. GaN isn’t great for that; the old sapphire substrates were very bad, and newer (and more expensive) SiC substrates are better but not sufficient, according to researchers at UC Riverside.

Metal is often used as a heat sink, but its ability to do so in very thin films dissipates because the main & … Read More → "Graphene Quilts"

High-Sigma Simulations

by Amelia Dalton

May 4, 2012

We’ve noted before that the meaning of “corners” is much less obvious for analog circuits than it is for digital. Solido noted in a recent announcement that memory design in particular highlights the challenge. Memories are built of analog circuits that are repeated numerous times, and getting them all to yield on aggressive processes with enormous variation is a tough job.

They say that the standard Monte Carlo “run enough samples to cover the space, and then interpolate … Read More → "High-Sigma Simulations"

Emulator in the Cloud

by Amelia Dalton

May 3, 2012

The other day we noted the launch of Mentor’s Veloce2. There’s one other angle to their release that sidestepped the main announcement. And that is that they will make available a cloud version of Veloce2.

We’ve looked at the different models used for tools in the cloud, including Synopsys and Cadence, Altium</ … Read More → "Emulator in the Cloud"