Mentor Blogs

  It used to not be such a big deal to buy a car and drive it for several years without feeling that much is missing. There were advances, of course, but models were more or less similar from year to year. That was then; this is now: In its annual survey of what vehicle owners want in their next car,  J.D. Power and Associates says there’s a lot of interest in device and application linking for … Read More

J.D. Power and Associates, Smartphones, buy a car, vehicle owners, wireless connectivity

This mil/aero geek is ecstatic that NASA has the resources, since the decommissioning of the shuttles, to start acting as a catalyst for the development of game-changing, space-related technologies. A couple really interesting stories have surfaced recently that have intrigued aerospace geeks, myself included. The most noteworthy is…wait for it…warp speed research! That’s right. You read that correctly. … Read More

SR-71 Blackbird, Skunkworks, Mil-Aero, Eagleworks, electrical, Milaero, Military, nasa, Aerospace, F-117 Nighthawk, John Applewhite, Mentor, F-22 Raptor, Mentor Graphics, Electronic, Mentor.com, Engineer, Geek, F-35 Lightning II, Harold "Sonney" White, U-2, Warp Speed

  Here’s an opportunity to help launch an intriguing company/technology. Mi Alerts is launching mobile technology that will send an alert to a customer’s mobile phone when the customer’s car is hit, damaged, or stolen. The complete Mi Alerts system will take photographs and videos of accidents or hit-and-runs, making it easier for insurance companies and law enforcement to settle disputes. Mi … Read More

GPS, hit & run, car, Indiegogo, Mi Alerts

Hi there This may seem a strange topic for a Process Engineering Blog but bear with me on this. Over the past few years, car manufacturers seem to be in a race to develop the cars with the highest number of gear ratios in them. Currently cars on the market have automatic gearboxes with 8 forward ratios. Manual gearboxes exist with 7 forward gears now.  I have also heard about possible future gearboxes … Read More

programming, AOI, data preparation, vPlan, bill of materials, BOM

Are you doing any simulation today, specifically for signal integrity issues?  Many design professionals believe that simulaiton is only needed for really bleeding-edge technology.  But in my recent meetings with customers, they are finding they need to simulate designs that once did not.  Even on simpler consumer electronic devices, or industrial controllers, the components they need to purchase for … Read More

I recently posted about using Virtual Prototypes pre-silicon with the recently introduced Sourcery CodeBench Virtual Edition and mentioned that the same native software development approach can be used when RTL is available on emulators.  This enables embedded software and hardware designers to exercise a HW design using actual SW, and a full stack which includes firmware, drivers, the operating system … Read More

virtual prototype, emulator, pre-silicon, Emulation, Veloce, virtual edition, RTL

This is the first in a series of blogs that presents the results from the 2012 Wilson Research Group Functional Verification Study. Study Overview In 2002 and 2004, Ron Collett International, Inc. conducted its well known ASIC/IC functional verification studies, which provided invaluable insight into the state of the electronic industry and its trends in design and verification. However, after the … Read More

UVM, Assertion-Based Verification, Formal Verification, Accellera, Verification Academy, Verification Methodology, functional coverage, Verilog, Functional Verification, VHDL

Mentor very recently introduced  a product that brings together the so far separate worlds of EDA or SoC design from embedded software with the new Sourcery CodeBench Virtual Edition. There is now a way pre-silicon to make use of native software development, for example running a complete Linux stack. This enables a number of things pre-silicon including: Validation of HW/SW SoC interfaces Integration … Read More

pre-silicon, Sourcery Analyzer, Emulation, virtual prototype, Vista, virtual edition

This week I am at Design WEST in San Jose, California. This is an annual pilgrimage for me – even though I still think of it as being the Embedded Systems Conference. This year I am participating in the conference in two events: First, I have a class titled “How to Measure RTOS Performance“, which takes place on Thursday at 09:15. If you would like a copy of the slides, please email … Read More

During the Mentor Graphics Integrated Electrical Solutions Forum (IESF) 2013 last month, Teal Group Vice President of Analysis Richard Aboulafia delivered both good and bad nws related to current and future aerospace market trends. The commercial passenger jet airliners (or jetliners) to watch are the Airbus A320neo and the Boeing 737 MAX. “This is a well-run duopoly brought to you by Airbus and Boing,” … Read More

Military, Milaero, Mentor, aerospace market, Mentor Graphics, Mentor.com, Mil-Aero, Aerospace, china, Geek, IESF, CS300, Integrated Electrical Solutions Forum, Bombardier, Japan, C-Series, Electronic, electrical, Engineer, Richard Aboulafia, Richard L. Aboulafia, Russia

In the royal family of thermal IC package modelling types, a detailed model is King. All critical 3D geometry is modelled explicitly, no abstraction into a thermal resistor equivalent model, no hiding all the proprietary design information inside either. Pros and cons of detailed models I covered a few years ago in this blog. Packaged ICs are complex, constructed of many parts, with many different material … Read More

Electronics Cooling, calibration, Package Model, T3ster

In my 10+ years of embedded Linux work I’ve worked with a lot of Linux trace technologies including the Linux Trace Toolkit (LTTng), System Tap, and even the not so well know and the unlikely to be mainline dtrace for Linux port. These are all very powerful tools that can expose many of the internal details of a Linux system and, depending how you use each tool, create huge volumes of data along … Read More

Linux, Sourcery Analyzer, CAN/LIN

Nucleus, our flagship RTOS offering has been around for several years now. In this time, it has been designed into more than 3 billion embedded devices in various applications such as mobile, medical, consumer electronics, industrial and more! The phrase “been there done that” could not be more appropriate to Nucleus. Regardless, when it came time to design yet another cool demo, our engineers were … Read More

industrial, Nucleus, DESIGN West, RTOS, Zigbee

NASA, for the second consecutive year, is actively seeking proposals for suborbital technology payloads and spacecraft capability enhancements capable of potentially revolutionizing future space missions. NASA will help test selected technologies before they are used for their intended purpose and environment—being launched into and functioning in the dark, cold reaches of outer space. After the selected … Read More

NASA's Langley Research Center, NASA's Flight Opportunities Program, Mil-Aero, Computer, Milaero, Military, nasa, Aerospace, electrical, Hardware, Mentor, Electronic, Mentor Graphics, Design Automation, Mentor.com, Electric, Game Changing Development Program, Engineer, Geek, NICER/SEXTANT, Small Spacecraft Technology Program, Stephen Gaddis

Hi there Many of our customers have seen an increase in the number of products that need to be grouped together to enable them to run with a single SMT setup to reduce the time taken for change-over from one product to another. The challenge is knowing which products can be incorporated in to a single group given the unique part numbers on each product and the feeder capacity of each machine in the … Read More

Planning, process, vPlan, bill of materials, Enhancement, programming, grouping, BOM, Sequence