Articles – EEJournal

February 17, 2020

“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” – George Santayana

I swear, people are trying their hardest to resurrect the 1970s. I thought the era of bell-bottom pants, 8-inch floppy disks, and bicycles with banana seats was nostalgia-proof. Yet here we are. First there was cloud computing, a throwback to the days of dumb terminals and remote time-sharing computers. Now we’ve got college-educated kids – good ones, at that – devising ways to revitalize the idea of broadcast TV and video arcades.

Ultimate Guide to Switch Debounce (Part 4)

by Max Maxfield

February 13, 2020

Previously, as they used to say at the start of a new episode in a TV series, we discussed the history behind the use of hardware vs. software to debounce our switches. We also perused and pondered the idea of using an RC network followed by a Schmitt trigger to debounce a single pole, single throw (SPST) toggle switch … Read More →

Machine Learning For a Few Dollars

Eta Compute’s ECM3532 Chip Brings Inference to the Edge

by Jim Turley

February 12, 2020

“We have to be very prissy about how we tell computers to do things.” – Richard P. Feynman

Alpha, beta, gamma, delta… something, something… lambda… uh, omega. That’s about all I remember of the Greek alphabet. College was a long time ago and I never joined a fraternity.

The folks at Eta Compute stayed in school, though, and got smart. They know that … Read More → "Machine Learning For a Few Dollars"

Cache Coherent Chaos

CCIX, CXL, and More

by Kevin Morris

February 11, 2020

We are at the dawn of the biggest change in decades in our global computing infrastructure. Despite the slow death of Moore’s Law, the rate of change in our actual computer and networking systems is accelerating, with a number of discontinuous, revolutionary changes that reverberate throughout every corner of computer system architecture.

As Moore’s Law grinds to an economic halt, the rate of performance improvement of conventional von Neumann processors has slowed, giving rise to a new age of accelerators for high-demand workloads. AI in particular puts impossible … Read More → "Cache Coherent Chaos"

Is the End of Email Coming?

User-Insensitive Spam Solutions Have Hurt Reliability

by Bryon Moyer

February 10, 2020

Picture this typical quotidian activity: You reply to an email sent by a colleague in a different company. Your reply makes it clear that you’re expecting a response within a reasonable timeframe. You wait a day… or two… or a week… and there’s no reply. You finally get them by phone and find out that they never received the email.

Granted, this is a worst-case scenario. There’s a sliding scale of issues with email, with the worst of them being that it simply isn’t delivered and … Read More → "Is the End of Email Coming?"

Ultimate Guide to Switch Debounce (Part 3)

by Max Maxfield

February 6, 2020

In Part 1 of this miniseries, we introduced the concept of switch bounce; that is, when we open (deactivate) or close (activate) a switch, it may make multiple transitions before eventually settling in its new state (see also my Switch Types and < … Read More → "Ultimate Guide to Switch Debounce (Part 3)"

Centaur Produces Nine-Headed, Two-Species Monster

New Server Chips Combine AI Acceleration with x86 Familiarity

by Jim Turley

February 4, 2020

“A great man is… an inspiration and a prophecy.” – Robert Green Ingersoll

If a centaur is supposed to be a combination of two separate beasts, then nothing could make a more appropriate mascot for Centaur Technology’s latest microprocessor. The tiny Austin-based company has created a dual-DNA, nine-headed creature that runs both x86 server code and hugely accelerated machine-learning (ML) processes. It’s a match made in mythology.

The new chip is called simply CHA (which doesn’t stand for anything), and … Read More → "Centaur Produces Nine-Headed, Two-Species Monster"

Will Automotive OEMs Take Full Control?

Well-Meaning Technologies Could Reduce Consumer Choice

by Bryon Moyer

February 3, 2020

The upshot: New technologies can help to protect the integrity of components in safety-critical systems (and others). Those same technologies could threaten free markets.

Our literature racks are full of stories about well-meaning technologies with a dark side. Those technologies make it into the light because of the benefits they provide. That dark side… well, somehow it never enters the marketing message makeup. And the dark-side horror stories we can read are often fictional, leveraging bits of truth, so why worry?

Ultimate Guide to Switch Debounce (Part 2)

by Max Maxfield

January 30, 2020

As we discussed in Part 1 of this miniseries, when we operate a switch, it may bounce multiple times before coming to rest in its new state (see also my Switch Types and Switch … Read More → "Ultimate Guide to Switch Debounce (Part 2)"

Promoting Design Hygiene

What do EDA tools and Preventive Dentistry Have in Common?

by Jim Turley

January 28, 2020

“Don’t sweat the petty things and don’t pet the sweaty things.” – George Carlin

In economic terms, you always want to give the easiest jobs to the lowest-paid employees. Save the hard stuff for the expensive and highly trained specialists. Ideally, you want each person working on a task they’re just barely qualified to perform; anything else is a waste of their talents and the company’s money. You don’t hire brain surgeons to dig … Read More → "Promoting Design Hygiene"