Why We Need Tech-Savvy Politicians
If Washington doesn't understand technology — and it doesn't — there are tough times ahead for the marketing, the economy, and jobs
If Washington doesn't understand technology — and it doesn't — there are tough times ahead for the marketing, the economy, and jobs
The review meeting comes a day after India reported two new confirmed coronavirus cases, one each in Delhi and Telangana. This took the total cases in the country to five.
Top executives of Emirates and Etihad, two of the Middle East's biggest airlines, have said passenger demand may not return to pre-coronavirus crisis levels until 2023.
Wrestler-turned-politician Babita Phogat on Tuesday helped police personnel here in preparing meals for the needy amid the ongoing lockdown, officials said.
Ananth Narayan, professor-finance at SPJIMR, believes that while TLTRO 2.0 is welcome, it does not address the core issue.
To tackle the current crisis arisen from the COVID-19 outbreak and the consequent nationwide lockdown, the government and the RBI have announced many measures to ease the stress of businesses.
“Keeping it open-ended and on-tap would be a better idea than conducting the operation on a pre-decided date. Banks should get enough leeway in deciding how much they want to borrow and when to borrow,” said an expert.
The discovery was announced by the Minor Planet Center on Tuesday. So far, the astronomers do not have enough data to establish what the minimoon is made of.
Witness the Pink Super Moon from your balconies today! One of the celestial events, which is an occurrence of a Super Moon, is set to take place today and can be witnessed by many from their balconies only.
As our lives come to depend on internet and apps, it is time we try to introduce the concept of accountability.
Getting big-ticket investments would be challenging; focus on investments that are modest in size and low in resource demands.
“Ever since the outbreak, we have observed increased volumes of phishing attacks as well as a number of malicious websites purporting to offer information or advice about the pandemic,” says Venugopal N, director, software engineering, Check Point Software Technologies.
Attackers are pivoting their existing infrastructure for the distribution of ransomware, phishing emails, and other malware, leveraging COVID-19 keywords that get us to click on links or open emails.
A Rs 4 lakh crore extra borrowing acknowledges huge fiscal slippage; raise loan-guarantee component in package.
Building the infrastructure for a low carbon future will require oil. While a long term decline for oil’s central place in energy use seems inevitable, we need to ensure that our oil sector continues to contribute to the national economy
Imran Hussain, the Ballimaran MLA, has been retained as a Cabinet minister in the Arvind Kejriwal government. He will take oath of office on Sunday along with his five Cabinet colleagues and Arvind...
A radical new form of universal basic income could revitalise damaged economies
While countries in east Asia and Europe are gradually taking steps towards reopening their economies, many in the global south are wondering whether the worst of the pandemic is yet to come. As economists who work on poverty alleviation in developing countries, we are often asked what the effects of coronavirus will be in south Asia and Africa. The truth is, we don’t know. Without extensive testing to map the number of cases, it’s impossible to tell how far the virus has already spread. We don’t yet have enough information about how Covid-19 behaves under different conditions such as sunlight, heat and humidity. Developing countries’ more youthful populations may spare them the worst of the pandemic, but health systems in the global south are poorly equipped to deal with an outbreak, and poverty is linked to co-morbidities that put people at a higher risk of serious illness.
Without the information widespread testing provides, many poorer countries have taken an extremely cautious approach. India imposed a total lockdown on 24 March, by which time the country had about 500 confirmed cases. Countries such as Rwanda, South Africa and Nigeria enforced lockdowns in late March, long before the virus was expected to peak. But these lockdown measures can’t last forever. Poorer countries could have used the quarantine to buy time, gather information about how the disease behaves and develop a testing and tracing strategy. Unfortunately, not much of this has happened. And, far from coming to their aid, rich countries have outrun poorer nations in the race for PPE, oxygen and ventilators.
Continue reading...Differentiating good IP from mediocre or bad IP is getting more difficult, in part because it depends upon how and where it is used and in part, because even the best IP may work better in one system than another—even in chips developed by the same vendor.
So, how do you measure IP quality and why it is so complicated?
The answer depends on who is asking. Most of the time, the definition of IP quality depends on your vantage point. If you are an R&D manager, IP quality means something. If you are a global supply manager, IP quality means something else. If you are an SoC start-up, your measure of quality is quite different from that of an established fabless company. If you are designing IP in-house, then your considerations are very different than being a commercial IP vendor. If you are designing an automotive SoC, then we are in a totally different category. How about as an IP vendor? How do you articulate IP quality metrics to your customers?
This varies greatly by the type of IP, as well. When it comes to interface (hard) IP and controllers, if you are an R&D manager, your goal is to design IP that meets the IP specifications and PPA (power, performance, and area) targets. You need to validate your design via silicon test chips. This applies to all hard PHYs, which must be mapped to a particular foundry process. For controllers that are in RTL form—we called these soft IP—you have to synthesize them into a particular target library in a particular foundry process in order to realize them in a physical form suitable for SoC integration. Of course, your design will need to go through a series of design validation steps via simulation, design verification and passing the necessary DRC checks, etc. In addition, you want to see the test silicon in various process corners to ensure the IP is robust and will perform well under normal process variations in the production wafers.
For someone in IP procurement, the measure of quality will be based on the maturity of the IP. This involves the number of designs that have been taped out using this IP and the history of bug reports and subsequent fixes. You will be looking for quality of the documentation and the technical deliverables. You will also benchmark the supplier’s standard operating procedures for bug reporting and technical support, as well as meeting delivery performance in prior programs. This is in addition to the technical teams doing their technical diligence.
An in-house team that is likely to design IP for a particular SoC project will be using an established design flow and will have legacy knowledge of last generation’s IP. They may be required to design the IP with some reusability in mind for future programs. However, such reusability requirements will not need to be as stringent and as broad as those of commercial IP vendors because there are likely to be established metrics and procedures in place to follow as part of the design team’s standard operating procedures. Many times, new development based on a prior design that has been proven in use will be started, given this stable starting point. All of these criteria help the team achieve a quality outcome more easily.
Then, if designing for an automotive SoC, additional heavy lifting is required. Aside from ensuring that the IP meets the specifications of the protocol standards and passes the compliance testing, you also must pay attention to meeting functional safety requirements. This means adherence to ISO 26262 requirements and subsequently achieving ASIL certification. Oftentimes, even for IP, you must perform some AEC-Q100-related tests that are relevant to IP, such as ESD, LU, and HTOL.
To read more, please visit: https://semiengineering.com/why-ip-quality-is-so-difficult-to-determine/
Design and verification standards are critical if we want to get a new generation of Internet of Things (IoT) devices into the market, according to panelists at an Accellera Systems Initiative breakfast at the Design Automation Conference (DAC 2015) June 9. However, IoT devices for different vertical markets pose very different challenges and requirements, making the standards picture extremely complicated.
The panel was titled “Design and Verification Standards in the Era of IoT.” It was moderated by industry editor John Blyler, CEO of JB Systems Media and Technology. Panelists were as follows, shown left to right in the photo below:
In opening remarks, Blyler recalled a conversation from the recent IEEE International Microwave Symposium in which a panelist pointed to the networking and application layers as the key problem areas for RF and wireless standardization. Similarly, in the IoT space, we need to look “higher up” at the systems level and consider both software and hardware development, Blyler said.
Rowen helped set some context for the discussion by noting three important points about IoT:
Here are some of the questions and answers that were addressed during the panel discussion.
Q: The claim was recently made that given the level of interaction between sensors and gateways, 50X more verification nodes would have to be checked for IoT. What standards need to be enhanced or changed to accomplish that?
Rowen: That’s a huge number of design dimensions, and the way you attack a problem of that scale is by modularization. You define areas that are protected and encapsulated by standards, and you prove that individual elements will be compliant with that interface. We will see that many interesting problems will be in the software layers.
Q: Why is standardization so important for IoT?
Dai: A company that is trying to make a lot of chips has to deal with a variety of standards. If you have to deal with hundreds of standards, it’s a big bottleneck for bringing your products to market. If you have good standardization within the development process of the IC, that helps time to market.
When I first joined Qualcomm a few years ago, there was no internal verification methodology. When we had a new hire, it took months to ramp up on our internal methodology to become effective. Then came UVM [Universal Verification Methodology], and as UVM became standard, we reduced our ramp-up time tremendously. We’ve seen good engineers ramp up within days.
Diab: When we start to look at standards, we have to do a better job of understanding how they’re all going to play with each other. I don’t think one set of standards can solve the IoT problem. Some standards can grow vertically in markets like industrial, and other standards are getting more horizontal. Security is very important and is probably one thing that goes horizontally.
Requirements for verticals may be different, but processing capability, latency, bandwidth, and messaging capability are common [horizontal] concerns. I think a lot of standards organizations this year will work on horizontal slices [of IoT].
Q: IoT interoperability is important. Any suggestions for getting that done and moving forward?
Rowen: The interoperability problem is that many of these [IoT] devices are wireless. Wireless is interesting because it is really hard – it’s not like a USB plug. Wireless lacks the infrastructure that exists today around wired standards. If we do things in a heavily wireless way, there will be major barriers to overcome.
Dai: There are different standards for 4G LTE technology for different [geographical] markets. We have to make a chip that can work for 20 or 30 wireless technologies, and the cost for that is tremendous. The U.S., Europe, and China all have different tweaks. A good standard that works across the globe would reduce the cost a lot.
Q: If we’re talking about the need to define requirements, a good example to look at is power. Certainly you have UPF [Unified Power Format] for the chip, board, and module.
Rowen: There is certainly a big role for standards about power management. But there is also a domain in which we’re woefully under-equipped, and that is the ability to accurately model the different power usage scenarios at the applications level. Too often power devolves into something that runs over thousands of cycles to confirm that you can switch between power management levels successfully. That’s important, but it tells you very little about how much power your system is going to dissipate.
Dai: There are products that claim to be UPF compliant, but my biggest problem with my most recent chip was still with UPF. These tools are not necessarily 100% UPF compliant.
One other concern I have is that I cannot get one simulator to pass my Verilog code and then go to another that will pass. Even though we have a lot of tools, there is no certification process for a language standard.
Q: When we create a standard, does there need to be a companion compliance test?
Rowen: I think compliance is important. Compliance is being able to prove that you followed what you said you would follow. It also plays into functional safety requirements, where you need to prove you adhered to the flow.
Dai: When we [Qualcomm] sell our 4G chips, we have to go through a lot of certifications. It’s often a differentiating factor.
Q: For IoT you need power management and verification that includes analog. Comments?
Rowen: Small, cheap sensor nodes tend to be very analog-rich, lower scale in terms of digital content, and have lots of software. Part of understanding what’s different about standardization is built on understanding what’s different about the design process, and what does it mean to have a software-rich and analog-rich world.
Dai: Analog is important in this era of IoT. Analog needs to come into the standards community.
Richard Goering
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Today, we are living in the era where whatever we think of as an idea is not far from being implemented…thanks to machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) entering into the...
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Greeting to all:
I am new in this tool, only 2 weeks. Trying to create a new Via with smaller size drill hole from exiting 13 mils size to 10 mils size. I got the message as imaged below. Any advise what to do? Thanks in advance.
JEE (Main)ની પરીક્ષા 18 જુલાઈથી 23 જુલાઈની વચ્ચે આયોજિત કરાશે, NEETની પરીક્ષા 26 જુલાઈએ લેવાશે
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•Lockheed Martin deploys the 3DEXPERIENCE platform as an engineering and manufacturing planning toolset •Multi-year collaboration aims to speed timelines and improve efficiencies of next generation products •Digital experience platform approach drives advances in complex, sophisticated aircraft innovation
The UN Sustainable Development Goals aim to end global poverty, but poorer countries are struggling to hit them. More help from richer countries is crucial, writes Mazdak Rafaty.
Sustainability is gaining traction in the creative industries, with the Italian region of Trentino designing a film production rating protocol that is being considered by the EU.
Despite recurrent challenges, Afghanistan’s business environment is improving. Now the authorities are working to persuade investors the rewards are worth the risk through a series of economic and legal reforms.
Asia outstrips the world for tourist arrivals and is still experiencing growth. Constant maintenance and upgrade are essential to maintain this lead.
Buildings account for nearly four-tenths of U.S. energy consumption through heating, cooling and other electricity use, according to the Energy Information Administration. And if that energy comes from fossil fuels, it releases more greenhouse gases that drive human-caused climate change.
A report that examines statements about rolling blackouts made by regional grid operator ISO-New England, shows that sustained growth of renewables, and not more gas, will boost reliability of New England’s electric power system.
The world must invest $2.4 trillion in clean energy every year through 2035 and cut the use of coal-fired power to almost nothing by 2050 to avoid catastrophic damage from climate change, according to scientists convened by the United Nations.
New state energy goals and innovative utility program offerings have been making headlines in recent months. These types of regional policies and incentives are important, especially as we face challenges ranging from grid constraints and fluctuating electricity prices to environmental concerns, but significant portions of the country are outside of the direct influence of energy use mandates and incentives.