D&R Industry Articles (October 2012)

Articles for the Week of October 29, 2012

Featured Article

Driver Solutions for LED Backlighting

White LEDs (WLED) are increasingly becoming the light source of choice for backlighting applications due to their attractiveness in power efficiency and form factor. This white paper looks into the design specifications and constraints for an LED driver for backlighting solutions. Architectural methods would be discussed to address these constraints.

• Leverage video for auto electronics design
• Electrically-aware design improves analog/mixed-signal productivity
• ARM-based Android hardware-software design using virtual prototypes - Part 1: Why virtualize?

Articles for the Week of October 22, 2012

Featured Article

Hybrid approach to early Validation and SW bring-up

Evolution of technology conforming to Moore’s law has enabled packing of billion transistors on a single chip. This evolution in HW manufacturing processes has also changed the basic premise on which architecture’s were conceived in previous generation of chips.

• Combating fake chips by controlling supply chain
• Small Cells - How fast and how many?
• Memory solution addressing power and security problems in embedded designs
• Auto apps accelerated by triple-play graphics cores

Articles for the Week of October 15, 2012

Featured Article

Automated On-the-Fly Verification of Designs Using Detector-Based Methodology

Based on the assertions approach, this paper presents an innovative methodology for the verification of analog and mixed-signal circuits which embeds detectors at each step of the hierarchical verification process to increase Quality Control and reduce Time to Market. This paper illustrates the approach with the input range and phase shift verification of the Analog Front-End (AFE) of an Energy Meter.

• One processor to rule them all?
• Cortex-A9 Processor Optimization Pack
• Regression testing with random tests cannot identify regressions
• FPGA-based video surveillance comes of age

Articles for the Week of October 8, 2012

Featured Article

From Multicore to Many-Core: Architectures and Lessons

Just as you were getting used to the idea of multicore processors in systems on chips (SoCs), the world is changing again. As several presentations at August’s Hot Chips Conference make clear, multicore is becoming many-core: the number of processor cores closely coupled at the hearts of SoCs is rising from 2 or 4 to 8, 16, or many, many more.

• Stretching the Dynamic Range of ADCs - A case study
• Big.LITTLE software is not so hard
• Efficient I2C Bus debug using Mixed Signal Oscilloscopes
• A Standard cell architecture to deal with signal integrity issues in deep submicron technologies
• System-on-chip technology comes of age
• Toward a two-processor world

Articles for the Week of October 1, 2012

Featured Article

The Challenges of USB 3.0

After a three-year teething period, USB 3.0 is finally mainstream. Microsoft and Apple support USB 3.0 in their latest releases of Windows and Mac OS X, respectively; Intel and AMD support USB 3.0 in their latest chipsets. This creates critical mass, which will cause USB 3.0 peripheral deployment to ramp significantly in the coming year.

• How partial dynamic reconfiguration helped make an FSK demodulator
• Removing pessimism and optimism in timing analysis
• Pipeline AES S-box Implementation Starting with Substitution Table