Mentor Blogs

You all know what a chatterbox I can be when I’m excited about something. So believe you me when I say the past few months have been excruciatingly hard for me. I’ve been sitting on some pretty big news and I’ve been itching to tell the world all about it.  Now that the cat is officially out of the bag, there’s no holding me back… FloTHERM XT as the enabling technology in the EDA/MDA design flow. The … Read More

Design Engineer, FloEFD, CFD, Thermal, FloTHERM XT

It seems that my previous post resonated deeply with everyone – I received a lot of offline comments and my post inspired two of my colleagues (Boris and Andras) to do their own blog posts. This doesn’t shock me because Thanksgiving week is one of the busiest travel periods in the States so everyone is thinking about flying. So I thought we should stay with the subject for one more day and look at it … Read More

T3ster, Thermal, FloEFD, CFD, LED, QA, FloVENT, hybrid engine

CFD, Giving Our Prototype Machinists a Break Computational fluid dynamics, of CFD, was a central focus of recent industry events, and I find the topic keeps cropping up in mil/aero discussions of late. In fact, CFD simulation tools are increasingly being employed by military prime contractors (aka, primes) to meet contract requirements, such as survivability in extreme environments and temperatures, … Read More

Mentor.com, Mentor Graphics, Hardware, aluminum, Azonix, Heat Sink, Mechanical, Mentor, Aerospace, Embedded Systems, Copper, Crane, Engineer, CAD, FloEFD, CFD, Design Automation, Mil-Aero, Thermal, Vetronics, Software, Terra Server, Model, prototype, Milaero, Military

I believe in simulation and its effectiveness. I’ve seen how much money it can save. I’m also not the most patient person on the face of the planet. Therefore, I like simulation because it can give fast answers to rather big questions. But sometimes you need more.  Sometimes you also need to measure the real world. This is especially true in the world of semiconductors. You see heat dissipation in … Read More

Thermal, T3ster, CTM, JEDEC, characteristics, package, Semiconductor, measurement hardware, NXP Semiconductors

At the heart of most mil/aero electronics—and arguably the most important component of current electronics systems is the processor. Virtually all mil/aero electronics take advantage of processors of one sort or another, whether x86, powerPC, RISC, FPGA, 32-bit, or 64-bit. Many different types of processing devices are employed by the modern warfighter, in fact. Today’s soldier, fed up with being made … Read More

Hardware, Engineer, Design Automation, Milaero, Computer, Warfighters, Mentor Graphics, x86, COTS, Geek, osbourne executive, Multicore, Thermal, Mentor, Mil-Aero, UAV, powerpc, Embedded Systems, Military, Silicon, Electronic, battlefield, soldier, soldiers

I love gadgets but I hate cables – they make things so untidy. As a result, anything that can go wireless in our house has – even our light switches are on remote control. I used to think this was just plain silly when we were going through the retrofit until I realized I could turn off the kitchen lights from the comfort of our sofa. I’ve only used this “power” once but I tell you knowing that I can … Read More

Physical Prototype, CFD, Consumer Electronics, Automotive, Quality, EMI shielding, Medical, Design Engineer, Thermal, Electromagnetic Interference

While de-icing my car this morning, I was listening to the radio. The announcer said that we are expecting more snow in London this week. The news sent shivers down my spine but not for the reason you may think. As if the ice on the road and pedestrians jumping in front of moving cars isn’t bad enough, we may have a new problem to deal with: it seems that LED traffic lights may have a problem dealing … Read More

Design Engineer, LED, CFD, Thermal

I think you can learn a lot by doing competitive benchmarking — the act of comparing yourself with your competitors along a certain set of criteria. It can highlight your strengths and weaknesses and it may even help you uncover new opportunities.  While you may already be familiar with the concept as it applies to manufactured goods, I’m not sure how many people consider looking at what their competitors … Read More

Thermal, Fan, Respin, Heatsink

A couple of days ago I was in the hallway conversing with a colleague about the power, pardon the pun, we have in our mobile phones.   Being thermal engineering types the conversation shifted towards how well the device could perform all of these amazing things while still remaining cool.   He commented on how well the thermal engineers did in designing the cooling solution for this particular product.  … Read More

Heatsink, Thermal

As a child I loved watching SciFi shows on TV – the older the reruns the better. Nothing was impossible or too fantastic. And as an adult, I find that I can’t exactly resist watching a few minutes of the old shows much to my husband’s dismay – hey, if I have to watch Jeremy Clarkson babble away on Top Gear then he should be able to sit thru 5 minutes of 1999 if nothing but for chuckle-value. So what … Read More

Fluid Flow, CFD, Visualization, Telecom, Thermal