There's a New Supercomputer in Town

Well, not in my town, but China has made a great leap forward to nab the lead in the Top 500 Supercomputer list, as described in NVIDIA Tesla GPUs Power World's Fastest Supercomputer

It's exciting to see GPU Computing gaining traction and accolades for certain highly parallel applications. I'm anxiously looking forward to GPU Computing helping to solve EDA problems. So far, there's been some nibbling around the edges and algorithms experimented with, but I'm not aware of production EDA products based on GPU. Yet. What EDA applications would most benefit from massively parallel processing, such as is offered by a GPU?

Blue Light Special on Software

Software is on sale in China! So says Software Companies Lower Prices to Fight Piracy in China, which reports that Microsoft and Autodesk are slashing prices of their OS and CAD software, respectively, in an effort to capture some revenue for their otherwise widely-pirated software.

Does the same thing happen with EDA software? The state of the EDA business in Asia is something I only know from the occasional rumor. How widespread is EDA piracy? How common is it to "crack" FlexLM? And, is EDA software already heavily discounted in Asian markets?

The last point most concerns American workers. Not only are American competing from a higher wage/cost-of-living, but what if the essential tools of our trade are cheaper overseas, as well? Strike two!

Insanely Great Principles

With Apple firing on all cylinders: taking over the mobile electronics market, increasing computer share, and, by the way, attaining the second largest market capitalization in the world, it's instructive to reflect on characteristics that make Steve Jobs such an effective CEO, as described in John Sculley: The Secrets of Steve Jobs’ Success [Exclusive Interview] | Cult of Mac.

Though I'm not sure I'd always like to be his employee, it is pleasing to be his customer. Customers willing to pay a stiff premium are the sincerest form of flattery.

SNUG San Jose 2011 CFP

The Call for Papers is OPEN for SNUG San Jose! Deadline to submit is November 5, 2010.

As my readers know, I find SNUG to be the most valuable conference for hands-on IC design engineers. I always leave with a list of new ideas to try back at work.

Why not launch your publishing career and boost your reputation by showing the cool stuff you've worked on?