Article Roundup: IC Thermal Analysis, TI’s Biggest Blunder, Hardware Emulation, Automotive Audio, and PCB Design & Manufacturing
- Hot Topic: Electronic Thermal Design
- Automotive’s Unsung Technology
- Hardware Emulation Gets Smarter With Save-and-Restore for Debug
- The Inside Story of Texas Instruments’ Biggest Blunder: The TMS9900 Microprocessor
- Virtual Fabrication and Assembly Documentation
Hot Topic: Electronic Thermal Design
Planet Analog
One aspect of successful circuit design is getting the thermal analysis right: How much heat will be produced under various operating conditions, and will any component exceed its rated limit? This article discusses an integrated electronics/thermal design environment that can give electronics engineers “first pass, sanity check” answers to these thermal design questions.
Automotive’s Unsung Technology
Semiconductor Engineering
Automotive audio technology is making big strides alongside autonomous vehicles and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication. Industry experts, including our own Anil Khanna, discuss the move to bi-directional audio in cars, noise cancellation, A2B-compliant microphones, and more.
Hardware Emulation Gets Smarter With Save-and-Restore for Debug
Tech Design Forum
The extension of save-and-restore to emulation in testbench acceleration can now be achieved with advances in data compression and optimization techniques. Backup/replay increases the efficiency of debugging by reducing storage space and speeding up the process. It also improves the debugging effectiveness by allowing the deployment of advanced debugging capabilities and optimizes the utilization of the emulation resources.
The Inside Story of Texas Instruments’ Biggest Blunder: The TMS9900 Microprocessor
IEEE Spectrum
Texas Instruments’ TMS9900 microprocessor could have powered the PC revolution. In 1978, TI’s TMS9900 was being considered for the IBM personal computer alongside the Motorola 6800, and Intel 8088. Wally Rhines shares the inside story of how IBM came to pick an inferior chip, TI birthed a loser, and Motorola’s seeming winner lost, too.
Virtual Fabrication and Assembly Documentation
Tech Briefs
For PCB design and manufacturing, virtual fabrication and assembly documentation has the potential to provide an alternative to the non-intelligent static versions of PCB drawings and supporting specifications. This would streamline the process of new product introduction, as well as increase efficiency.
