A panel discussion at DesignCon showed just how little progress has been made in the silicon intellectual property market in the last five years.

In a DesignCon keynote address, IEEE 2007 President and CEO Leah Jamieson discussed challenges facing engineering educators in North America, including a lack of interest in the discipline among prospective students.

A notably unskeptical panel examined the issue of IP encryption at DesignCon, concluding that it was a good idea, a technical challenge, and not a high priority.

During a panel at this week's DesignCon tradeshow, industry executives agreed that a model-based approach to design for manufacturing results in better-yielding designs, compared to rule-based approaches.

With IC process geometries shrinking below 45 nm and many applications requiring lower power consumption, thermal control is starting to become a first-order concern for not only IC engineers but also package, board, and system designers.

Engineers face a growing dc/dc-conversion challenge in both notebook and server designs, and vendors could do more to help the situation by delivering more complete characterization of dc/dc-converter modules, according to panelists participating in a Tuesday panel at DesignCon.

It may be a long way from becoming a mainstream process for analog circuits, but 65-nm technology is already proving its worth for mixed-signal functions, according to a Tuesday panel at DesignCon 2007.

Advanced Micro Devices Senior Fellow and Chief Platform Architect Steve Polzin discussed the challenges of implementing multi-core processors along with the company's plans for accelerated computing during a packed DesignCon event.

Many designers spend way too much time, and thus their companies spend too much money, re-verifying IP from vendors.

Xilinx Chairman, CEO and President Wim Roelandts told a full audience at this week's DesignCon tradeshow that consumer-based "triple play" applications are driving the demand for programmable chip solutions.

Agilent Technologies has debuted the Agilent N4916A, what it claims is the industry's first de-emphasis signal converter.

The New York-based IP provider announced a new IP core that it said implements a controller for all industry-standard DDR and DDR2 memory devices.

The International Engineering Consortium has announced the winners of its 2007 DesignVision Awards.

The semiconductor solutions vendor has announced the availability of its new low-power crosspoint switch, the VSC3304.

The Los Altos, Calif.-based tech licensing company has announced a full schedule of demos and displays to promote its XDR memory architecture at this week's DesignCon 2007 conference.

Agilent Technology's J-BERT N4903A has snagged the DesignVision Award 2007 in the test and measurement category.

Transmeta and Fujitsu are set to demonstrate LongRun2's power management features at this week's DesignCon.