Archive for October, 2015
Wednesday, October 28th, 2015
Cars are cool. They’re personal transportation pods carefully crafted to the scale of the human body that zip from here to there at the discretion of the person behind the wheel. But it’s not the transportation aspect that has sold cars from the beginning of time; it’s the wow factor. A combination of metrics that take a vehicle from the ordinary to the extraordinary: provenance, make, style, workmanship, power, vintage, color, price, exclusivity.
Today, new metrics are figuring with increasing urgency into the traditional wow-factor calculus that sells cars. Things like type of power train – only hybrid and electric need apply. Bells-and-whistles infotainment systems to tell you where you are now and how to get to where you’re going, while keeping you uniquely entertained en route and caught up with your phone calls. And a host of safety features: Is your airbag functional? What nearby vehicles are trying to cut you off? Are your tires appropriately inflated? How much fuel is left if you travel at a given speed? What’s really behind you when you’re backing up?
All of these new-fangled metrics are, of course, products of the digital age – and engineering teams that need a heck-of-a-lot more sophisticated design tools than in the olden days. This week Mentor Graphics – a certifiable behind-the-scenes kingpin in the automotive supply chain scene – announced one such tool, if an embedded OS can be called a tool.
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Tags: Andrew Patterson, GENIVI Alliance, GENIVI-based Linux platform, Mentor Automotive, Mentor Automotive Connected OS, Mentor Graphics
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Thursday, October 22nd, 2015
Matt Wood, in his poignant journaling about Marie Pistilli, is only wrong in one way: Marie is not the only one living on borrowed time, we are all living on borrowed time. We do not, however, all live on time travel time.
For that, you have to be really special. You have to be that one-in-a-zillion person who gets an invite to ride in a Time Machine. And not just any time machine, but my Time Machine!
A highly innovative craft of my own creation in which I am at the controls in the cockpit, and my carefully chosen passengers just sit back and enjoy the ride. Marie Pistilli, naturally, is among that handful of unique individuals who deserves an invite to travel in my craft, and Pat of course. Today’s destination?
1999! (As in, let’s party like it’s …)
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Tags: 36th DAC, Design Automation Conference, Marie Pistilli, MP Associates, New Orleans, Pat Pistilli, Time Travel, Workshop for Women in Design Automation
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Thursday, October 15th, 2015
Imperas Founder & CEO Simon Davidmann has been thinking about the EDA industry for a while, and the consortium that represents it. And like a lot of observers, he thinks change is in the air. In previous blogs, I myself have predicted that EDAC will evolve to offer better representation to IP providers, but Davidmann believes changes in the consortium will be even more dramatic.
“When EDAC was started,” Davidmann said in a recent phone call, “it was about CAD tools. But design automation has evolved from schematic layout and simulation to a point where everything is focused on really big designs. Yes, IP is a fundamental part of that evolution and companies like Synopsys have made a lot of investment in IP, so EDAC has no problem including IP in its landscape.
“But real problems today and tomorrow are about dealing with large systems on chips. Something that is moving the focus in the industry to software. Chip design is no longer just about design tools and IP, it’s about systems, and the software that runs on those platforms.
“As a consortium designed to help companies in the design automation business, therefore, EDAC has to look at not just design tools and IP. It also has to look at systems and software. An emerging technology, quickly moving into the mainstream, is virtual platforms for software development. Of course, Synopsys is investing in virtual platforms – an indication of the importance of such things in the design process.
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Tags: ARM, Cadence, Coverity, EDA Consortium, EDAC, Imagination Technologies, Imperas, inSilicon, Mentor Graphics, Simon Davidmann, Synopsys
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Wednesday, October 7th, 2015
If you already know that EDAC is hosting a panel in San Jose on October 29th – “Patents & Patents Litigation: Develop, Strengthen, and Protect Your Intellectual Property” – you know the participants come from a variety of backgrounds:
John Cabeca, Director of the Silicon Valley US Patent & Trademarks Office; Karna Nisewaner, Associate General Counsel at Cadence; Robert Sachs, Partner at Fenwick & West; John Vandenberg, Partner at Klarquist Sparkman; Salumeh Loesch, Associate at Klarquist Sparkman; and Samuel Liccardo, Mayor of San Jose.
You probably also know, however, that no matter how much optimism and happy talk is thrown at the topic of patents – how to craft them, prosecute and litigate – the underlying controversy will never go away.
That catastrophic and philosophical disconnect between:
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Tags: Cadence, EDA Consortium, EDAC, Fenwick & West, John Cabeca, John Vandenberg, Karna Nisewaner, Klarquist Sparkman, Mentor Graphics, Patent Litigation, Patent Prosecution, Robert Sachs, Salumeh Loesch, Samuel Liccardo, Synopsys, US Patent Office
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