August 2014 – EEJournal

Faster Extraction from Cadence

August 28, 2014

Cadence recently announced new extraction tools, claiming both greater speed (5x) and best-in-class accuracy for full-chip extraction. And what is it that lets them speed up without sacrificing results?

The answer is the same thing that has benefited so many EDA tools over the last few years: parallelism. Both within a box (multi-threading) and using multiple boxes (distributed computing). The tools can scale up to hundreds of CPUs, although they’re remaining mum on the details of how they did this…

They have two new tools: a new Read More → "Faster Extraction from Cadence"

A New 3D

by Bryon Moyer

August 26, 2014

3D has been tossed about quite a bit over the last few years. We can ignore the 3D TV craze that came and went like an evanescent avatar. But the two IC manifestations have been 3D transistors (i.e., FinFETs) and 3D package integration – stacking chips.

The latter is a more-than-Moore technology that allows multiple chips, each built on processes best suited to it, with the ability to leverage high-volume off-the-shelf dice like memories instead of designing them from scratch.

But what if you want to scale like circuits vertically? That’s to … Read More → "A New 3D"

Old-School Analog Outputs

by Bryon Moyer

August 25, 2014

Today we looked at the role of Freescale’s new FXLN83xxQ accelerometer for analyzing vibrations. But one feature of the accelerometer had me cocking an eyebrow: analog outputs.

We’ve covered a lot about sensors here before, and in the huge majority of the cases, a sensor consists of a MEMS (or other) sensing element, an ASIC to clean up and digitize the signal, and then … Read More → "Old-School Analog Outputs"

A HEMT Cool-Down

by Kevin Morris

August 21, 2014

Heat has got to be one of the most annoying side-effects of doing useful electrical work. The more work we do, the more things heat up, changing the characteristics of the circuitry and, if we’re not careful, leading to early end-of-life or outright failure.

It’s heat that’s part of why we’ve gone to multicore instead of simply ratcheting up microprocessor clock frequencies forever. Greater dissipation is one reason we end up with power transistors that are larger than they need to be for electrical reasons. And when 3D ICs … Read More → "A HEMT Cool-Down"

In-Situ Real-Time Process Checks

by Kevin Morris

August 19, 2014

Yesterday we looked at number of different ways of inspecting wafers. Such inspections can be an important part of a process that turns out high yields of high-quality chips. They serve a couple of roles in this regard.

The most obvious is that you catch faulty material early. If rework is possible, you can then rework it; if not, well, you don’t throw good processing money after bad.

But the other reason is probably more important: by looking at … Read More → "In-Situ Real-Time Process Checks"

A New IoT Protocol

by Bryon Moyer

August 14, 2014

We’ve got a number of ways of getting our devices to talk to each other. Some time back, I opined that Bluetooth Low Energy and WiFi seemed to have the edge, largely influenced by the burgeoning Internet of Things (IoT). Zigbee, meanwhile, seems to have more sway in the Smart Grid.

Well, some folks still aren’t happy with these options. There are three capabilities that are … Read More → "A New IoT Protocol"

A PIC for the IoT

by Jim Turley

August 13, 2014

If you’re building a Thing for the Things’ Internet (consumer-edition – i.e., the CIoT), then, even though you may do your heavy computing work in the Cloud, you’ll still need something to make your thing act more intelligent than the assembly of metal and plastic that it is.

Perhaps you’ll need it for management, perhaps for sensor fusion; it’s not likely to be a difficult computing challenge, but you’ll need something. … Read More → "A PIC for the IoT"

First Formal DDS Security

by Bryon Moyer

August 11, 2014

As noted in today’s article on some of the characteristics of the DDS data transport standard, it’s missing a rather important component: formalized security. Proprietary schemes have been layered on top of it, but the OMG has a beta standard that they’re now finalizing (a process that could take up to a year).

But that doesn’t stop early adoption. RTI has announced an implementation of the new OMG security standard for DDS – something likely made easier since, … Read More → "First Formal DDS Security"

Hello everyone, Paul Karazuba fr

by KarenSimon

August 7, 2014

Hello everyone, Paul Karazuba from QuickLogic here.

Just a few clarifications – while we are definitely less than 250µW active power for our wearable specific sensor hub designs, I think it’s only fair to point out that our ArcticLink 3 S1 sensor hub is also less than 250µW active power for Smartphone-centric sensor hubs, while maintaining KitKat compatibility.

Also, regarding Rich’s comment, I suppose this all depends on what you are trying to do — if you strapped your wearable onto a drone and are using it to control the drone, then a high data rate … Read More → "Hello everyone, Paul Karazuba fr"

Anything But Moore’s Law

by KarenSimon

August 7, 2014

Any new foundry would want to grow up to be a megalith like TSMC, right? Isn’t that how you prove you’ve “made it”? Well, not if you’re Novati. They’re a different sort of foundry, one you don’t hear about so often over the noise of the Big Guys.

Here’s the thing: when you’re in the foundry mainstream, … Read More → "Anything But Moore’s Law"