July 2011 – Page 2

A New Spin on Logic

July 7, 2011

Way back in 2008, we took a look at MRAM technology. As a brief review, you may recall that Crocus in particular takes advantage of tunneling magneto-resistance between two magnetic layers. The bottom layer is fixed, or “pinned” and acts as a reference layer. The top one – also referred to as the “free” or “storage” layer – can have its magnetic polarity (or, more accurately, moment) reversed. Selectivity can be improved by engineering the materials so that a current during the write operation will heat the cell and lower the “coercivity” … Read More → "A New Spin on Logic"

Starting from Scratch

by Jim Turley

July 6, 2011

In this “advanced” age of EDA, it’s not uncommon for new point tools to come along, improving some bottleneck in an otherwise reasonably well-established tool chain. What’s less common is for an entire new tool flow to emerge. And it’s even less common yet for one to emerge all from a single company. And a small one, no less.

And yet that’s what’s happened recently in the analog/custom world. Vivid Engineering, at its roots a design services house, has launched Symica (they haven’ … Read More → "Starting from Scratch"

Where do you want to get to your data?

by Amelia Dalton

July 1, 2011

Harris did a poll recently at the behest of a German company called TeamViewer that provides access to computer data from anywhere. The study asks questions about where people want to be able to access data they don’t have with them. I’m assuming they also did the study before developing the product, but this data is recent.

While TeamViewer provided some distilled statistics in their press release, they also put some raw data tables in there, which provide a couple other humorous insights.

The real take-away from this whole … Read More → "Where do you want to get to your data?"