Monthly Archives: October 2009

Acquisitions: cull the managers

Posted on October 6, 2009 by paulmcl

When a company acquires another one, not just in EDA, there is often an internal group already doing something similar. For example, Intuit has just acquired mint.com and they already have a product, Quicken Online that competes in pretty much … Continue reading →

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Biometrics

Posted on October 5, 2009 by paulmcl

What are biometrics? It is authenticating people by some aspect of their body, typically fingerprints (or finger vein), iris scan or voice recognition. I think that it will become much more important in the coming years since it offers a … Continue reading →

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The flaw of averages

Posted on October 2, 2009 by paulmcl

I’ve been reading a very interesting book called “The Flaw of Averages” by Sam Savage. It looks at why using average data only produces the correct answers in very limited circumstances. The flaw of averages is that plans based on … Continue reading →

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Designing a chip is like…?

Posted on October 1, 2009 by paulmcl

You’ve probably tried to explain to somebody the unbelievable scale of what it takes to design a modern chip with hundreds of millions or billions of transistors. But even we have difficulty with numbers when they get that large, like … Continue reading →

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