The DesignCon panel with the descriptive title "Science Fiction…Is It Really Fiction?" organized by Leslie Van Grove of Mentor, was held in front of a packed house. The audience liked the panel not only because the panelists were "deep thinkers" but because it introduced in a conference focused only on technology a discourse about the social, moral, and political consequences of what we all work to produce. Every substantive idea deserves debate, and some of the probabilities described by the panelists can be labeled "controversial". As an example, panelist Gentry Lee, a space scientist and well known science fiction author, speculated that given the advances in medical electronics, robotics, and pharmacology, it may be possible to achieve immortality as soon as 200 years from now. Many in the audience were very eager to pursue this topic speculating on what could be possible given such life span. Surprisingly, no one thought, or at least verbalized, some of the less attractive consequences of such eventuality. Scientists and engineers call the result of their work progress, but can scientific and engineering advances alone bring real progress?

Cadence reported fourth quarter 2009 revenue of $220 million, compared to revenue of $227 million reported for the same period in 2008. On a GAAP basis, Cadence recognized net income of $2 million, or $0.01 per share on a diluted basis, in the fourth quarter of 2009, compared to a net loss of $1.63 billion, or $(6.55) per share on a diluted basis in the same period in 2008. The news is a mixture of reasonably good news, and not so good news. The reasonable good news is that Cadence is coming out of the significant slump in revenue experienced in 2008. The not so good news is that financial conditions worldwide will not permit Cadence to work its way back to a revenue level above the $1 billion. In fact the company recognizes that there is a possibility that revenue will not grow at all in 2010. We are living in interesting times indeed.

Building on the success of its HiFi 2 Audio DSP (digital signal processing), Tensilica has introduced HiFi EP, a superset of the HiFi 2 architecture that is optimized for simultaneous multichannel codec support and/or continuously expanding audio pre- and post-processing in home entertainment products such as Blu-ray Disc players, digital television (DTV), and Smartphones. It has also been enhanced for very efficient, high-quality voice pre- and post-processing. These enhancements result in up to 40 percent lower power and up to a 50 percent size reduction.

Altium has expanded its offering with the announcement of a new NanoBoard 3000 hosting the Altera Cyclone III FPGA. The new board continues to provide electronics designers with the same hardware, software, and ready-to-use, royalty-free IP of the NanoBoard 3000, but with the choice of Altera’s Cyclone III FPGA at its core.

Synopsys, Inc. has acquired VaST Systems Technology Corporation to extend its virtual prototyping solutions into the automotive and consumer application space. The acquisition adds a comprehensive set of processor sub-system models frequently found in automotive and consumer applications to Synopsys' virtual prototyping portfolio. Processor sub-system models allow developers to accelerate the virtualization of electronic systems and to start software development nine to 12 months prior to the availability of silicon.

Agilent Technologies Inc. announced its support for IBIS-AMI (Algorithmic Modeling
Interface) -- a modeling standard for SerDes transceivers created to enable fast, statistically significant analysis of high-speed serial links. Agilent's work in support of this standard is expected to yield the commercial release of a new version of Advanced Design System, ADS 2010, which will allow signal integrity designers to integrate IBIS-AMI models into their ADS projects.

Cadence Design Systems, Inc. has released Encounter Digital Implementation (EDI) System 9.1, a complete and integrated digital design, implementation, and verification environment for the development of large-scale, complex SoCs. The new and expanded suite of capabilities in EDI System 9.1 aims to answer the industry call for improved designer productivity in developing advanced low power SoCs at leading-edge process nodes -- such as 32- and 28-nanometer -- with hundreds of millions of gates, including hundreds of IP elements and embedded processors.

Evatronix SA and Circuits Multi Projects (CMP), today announced their collaboration and development of an educational program by including the distribution of the large portfolio of Evatronix Intellectual Property (IP) for Universities and Research Laboratories.

Altera Corporation announced innovations that will be incorporated into upcoming 28-nm FPGAs. Embedded HardCopy Blocks, a new method for partial reconfiguration and embedded 28-Gbps transceivers will improve the density and I/O performance of next-generation Altera FPGAs.

The rapid growth of bandwidth-intensive applications such as high-definition (HD) video, cloud computing, online data storage and mobile video has created a challenge for both infrastructure and end-user equipment developers. How can they quickly increase system bandwidth while staying within strict power and cost budgets? Altera claims to have developed its latest innovations to solve these challenges.

Calypto Design Systems Inc. announced that Virage Logic’s 45-nanometer (nm) and 28nm SiWare Memory compilers now automatically generate PowerPro MG power optimization models for reducing System-on-Chip (SoC) embedded memory power. This support is the result of a collaboration between the two companies to reduce on-chip SoC memory power. Using PowerPro MG, designers can reduce both dynamic and leakage power, resulting in up to 80 percent memory power reduction compared to previous implementations.