Archives: Articles

December 14, 2018

“There will be more than 24 billion things connected to the Internet by the year 2020,” said Linda Grindstaff, VP of Content Operations in McAfee’s Office of the CTO, who keynoted at the recent Internet of Things Device Security Summit held in Santa Clara, California. That’s more than four connected devices per person on the planet. “There will be more than 80 connected devices in a household by 2020,” she said, noting that, “all of these … Read More → "Do This now! Before the IoT Security Tsunami Hits"

Microsemi Joins RISC-V Love Fest with SoC FPGA

PolarFire SoC FPGA Architecture is Based on Multiple RISC-V Processor Cores

by Steven Leibson

December 13, 2018

Processors and FPGAs go together like chocolate and peanut butter, but it took a few years to get the recipe just right. Early turn-of-the-millennium attempts included the Xilinx Virtex II Pro with an on-chip PowerPC processor core and Altera’s Excalibur device with an ARM922T processor core. These early products are considered market failures. Actually, Kevin Morris called the Altera Excalibur “a monumental flop” in his article titled “Shaking Up Embedded Processing.” Why? Because you can’t just plop an unconnected microprocessor core into the middle of an FPGA … Read More → "Microsemi Joins RISC-V Love Fest with SoC FPGA"

RISC-V: The Groundswell Continues

The Faithful Gather in Santa Clara

by Jim Turley

December 12, 2018

“Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

It’s interesting to attend a religious revival meeting when you’re not a member of that particular denomination. It’s a bit like attending a political rally as an outsider, or buying tickets to a live concert even though you hate the band but your date really wants to go. You smile and make polite conversation with the attendees, all of whom have something in common. And, in the end, you might come away with … Read More → "RISC-V: The Groundswell Continues"

Who Chooses Components and Tools?

Engineering Organizations Make Decisions Complex

by Kevin Morris

December 11, 2018

Before becoming professional engineers, most of us designed and built things as a hobby. It’s rare to find an engineer who jumped right into engineering school without at least some background of tinkering and experimenting. And, when we did those projects, we had full control. We could choose whatever part we wanted or needed. We didn’t have to deal with management, manufacturing, procurement, approved parts libraries, second sources, distributor line cards, or any of the other myriad constraints that tie the creative hands of just about every working professional engineer on the … Read More → "Who Chooses Components and Tools?"

Communication Solves Flash Unpredictability

HCC Embedded Launches a Failsafe Flash Translation Layer

by Bryon Moyer

December 10, 2018

That flash thumb drive you have in your pocket is a beast of a memory. We store so much stuff in so little space; that form factor has completely democratized the storing of masses of data that would once have been assigned to a giant data center of yore. And all in your pocket now.

Of course, this comes at a cost. This is NAND flash, and when your main goal is to minimize memory area – and maximize capacity – you must trade some things off. Most notably, you can’t randomly access an individual cell – or word … Read More → "Communication Solves Flash Unpredictability"

A Fab for All Reasons

Semiconductor Fab Chases Materials for Persistent Memory Derby

by Steven Leibson

December 6, 2018

Last week, I discussed the industry’s pursuit of Persistent Memory (PM) as a way to reduce mass storage (SSDs and HDDs) latency. (See “What Will Replace DRAM and NAND, and When?”) In that article, I mentioned some of the many candidate technologies in the PM Derby. Figure 1 is a graphic from Intermolecular (IMI) with a detailed list of PM technologies under development. The graphic shows the various candidate … Read More → "A Fab for All Reasons"

Achronix Accelerates eFPGA

7nm Speedcore Gen4 Brings Big Improvements

by Kevin Morris

December 5, 2018

Perhaps when the most important problem is a nail, every solution starts to look like a hammer. With the ramping explosion in AI and machine learning, countless companies are trying to climb on the bandwagon, morphing and melding their existing technologies in an attempt to come up with a differentiated solution that will capture a meaningful share of this mind-boggling emerging opportunity. Everybody from EDA vendors to cloud data centers to GPU companies, FPGA companies, IP companies, and boutique semiconductor startups are spinning stories about how their technology is the key to unlocking the potential of AI.

OneDrive II: The Extended Test Drive

Microsoft’s Cloud Service Doesn’t Improve with Age

by Jim Turley

December 4, 2018

“Familiarity breeds contempt.” – popular proverb

December has come. Winter and the Christmas season are approaching, and it’s a time for goodwill, a forgiving attitude, and hopeful thoughts of peace and happiness, when we all…

Nope, I can’t do it. I’ve been using Microsoft’s OneDrive cloud service for about six months now, and it hasn’t put me in a generous mood. … Read More → "OneDrive II: The Extended Test Drive"

That Buzz in your Pocket

Boréas Lays Out a Lower-Power PZ Haptics Driver

by Bryon Moyer

December 3, 2018

Today we’re going to talk about – um… hang on a sec, my phone is buzzing……… OK, sorry, I’m back. Um, so, yeah, haptics. Generically, it’s what we do on equipment to lend not only a sense of sound and sight for feedback, but also touch. And that touch angle has many forms – like when your phone vibrates.

But it also impacts, for instance, how a device gives tactile feedback regarding pushed buttons, as we discussed Read More → "That Buzz in your Pocket"

What Will Replace DRAM and NAND, and When?

Persistent Memory’s Advantages Present an Irresistible Lure

by Steven Leibson

November 29, 2018

Long, long ago, back when Richard Nixon was president of the United States of America, magnetic cores were the dominant computer memory technology. In fact, magnetic cores were essentially the only practical memory technology for two decades. Although we had hand-woven rope memory for ROM, only the Apollo space computers and the HP 9100 desktop calculator used it. My 1954 “Britannica Book of the Year”—a real book, made from dead trees—says that RCA Laboratories announced a working core memory in 1953 that used a 100×100 grid of wires to control 10,000 ferrite toroids.

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Sunday Brunch Video for 16th December 2018

Dec 16, 2018

https://youtu.be/izP9iUskcXQ Made at the Cadence Marketing Holiday Party (camera Sean) Monday: RISC-V: Real Products in Volume Tuesday: IEDM: All About Interconnect Wednesday: The Conway... [[ Click on the title to access the full blog on the Cadence Community site. ]]...