Our Blog of the Week Award goes to Simon Favre at Mentor Graphics for his take on TSMC’s design for manufacturing announcement. It’s a fine bit of investigative analysis that would make all good editors proud. If you wonder what’s really going on behind the scenes, this blog is a must read. Nice job Simon, and if you ever need a writing gig you know who to call.

Sometimes even the best engineers get tripped up on new jargon. The problem we find is that most engineers don’t want to admit it for a variety of reasons, ranging from looking intelligent to their bosses and colleagues to hoping that the terminology is a passing fad and no one will really have to learn that stuff. The problem is we end up with lots of interpretations that confuse the heck out of everybody because no two people interpret anything the same way. Getting out in front of this is a great way to avoid confusion, which is what Jurgen Jaeger at Synopsys has done. Good move, Jurgen.

Just imagine the surprise of the Specman team at Cadence to wake up and find out there’s a new “E” text editor they knew nothing about. They’re trying to find out how the author came up with the name “E.” Well, yes, they do have a point there. We’d like to know that, too. But also realize it is hard to lay claim to the English alphabet.

Harry…the ASIC guy talks about his TV preferences and why he’d rather spend time listening to the Synopsys earnings call. You can do it yourself, of course, or you can cut to the chase by clicking here, or on Gabe Moretti’s take on that call.

Ever wonder how social media plays into the B2B space? Or why there are no rules about how to write a blog? Check out Rick Jamison’s Q&A about the difference between services-focused vs. product-focused companies.

The problem with acronyms is there are both too many and too few. There are too many to remember with any clarity, and too few to avoid using the same acronym for several different purposes. For example, PC means personal computer and politically correct. CFD means computational fluid dynamics, but don’t tell that to the Chicago Fire Department or a real estate broker who will probably see it as a contract for deed or a lawyer working on a contract for difference. And apparently you shouldn’t mention it to Nazita Saye’s co-workers, either.

&emdash;Ed Sperling

Tags: Cadence, Mentor Graphics, Synopsys

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 27th, 2009 at 9:09 pm and is filed under News Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.