Articles – Page 119

September 20, 2018

A big chunk of the vast, imagined IoT (Internet of Things) includes the industrial IoT (IIoT), which is responsible for controlling and monitoring energy-consuming processes based on large motors, pumps, fans, generators, heavy-duty actuators, heaters, and other high-power equipment. Such IIoT applications aren’t as concerned with low-power design compared to the medical and consumer side of the IoT—wearables and the like. Medical and consumer IoT designs are more sensitive to high-volume unit costs and low-power considerations, which makes them good targets for ASIC implementations.

The semiconductor foundries have … Read More → "0.6V, and Still the Memory Persisted"

The Librarian, the Engineer, and the Supermodel

EMA Design Automation Solves a Problem Every PCB designer Has

by Jim Turley

September 19, 2018

“Hard work without talent is a shame, but talent without hard work is a tragedy.” – Robert Half

Life is not a zero-sum game. There is not a finite amount of success, talent, happiness, or intelligence to be distributed among us. Being good at something doesn’t require being bad at something else as compensation. Newton’s Third Law doesn’t apply to professional behavior.

The cause célèbre du jour in the Twittersphere right now … Read More → "The Librarian, the Engineer, and the Supermodel"

Plunify Cloud-powers Xilinx

On-Demand Design Tools for the Win

by Kevin Morris

September 18, 2018

As FPGA designs have gone from manageable to humongous, the demands on design tools and design tool expertise has risen exponentially. Long gone are the days when an applications engineer could waltz into your lab, click a few magic keys on a laptop, and walk out an hour later, having helped you achieve timing closure on your problematic FPGA design. Now, FPGA tools demand massive amounts of compute power and considerable expertise in order to achieve the best results for your design.

Singapore-based Plunify has spent the last several years … Read More → "Plunify Cloud-powers Xilinx"

High Bandwidth, Modest Capacity

Micron Launches GDDR6; Cadence Talks AI/Crypto Memory

by Bryon Moyer

September 17, 2018

Aaaaand… it’s memory time again. I don’t keep up with every release of memory (who could keep up with that without dedicating their lives to nothing but that?), but here and there we have either technology or application angles to new-memory stories. So, in that vein, we address memory in automotive and AI. Yes, two critical keywords in any tech article these days.

Automotive Moves to Graphics

I chatted with Micron Technologies about their latest Read More → "High Bandwidth, Modest Capacity"

A Kit of Its Own: Voler Systems’ Health-Sensor Platform

Company Creates Pre-Engineered Prototyping Kit for Wireless IoT Medical Apps

by Steven Leibson

September 13, 2018

There’s a reason why I’m sitting in a conference room located on the second floor of a small Sunnyvale office building across the street from the Sunken Gardens Golf Course. I’m sitting across the table from Voler Systems’ president Walt Maclay with a pulse plethysmograph optical sensor (that’s an infrared photoelectric sensor used to record changes in pulsatile blood flow from a finger or toe) clipped to my right forefinger. Instead of the usual static, boring PowerPoint slide on the conference room’s screen, I see live on-screen data tracking my pulse … Read More → "A Kit of Its Own: Voler Systems’ Health-Sensor Platform"

Computer Vision 101

Making Machines See the World is Harder Than it Looks

by Jim Turley

September 12, 2018

“Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.” — Jonathan Swift

What started out as an experiment has become an obsession. I wanted to see what happened to the dinosaurs.

I confess, I have (or had) two big concrete dinosaurs in my backyard. They’re awkward and massive and weigh about 200–300 pounds each. They look great hiding amongst the ferns, and they scare off rodents. And startle houseguests.

But one of them disappeared without a trace. Just like … Read More → "Computer Vision 101"

Brainchip Debuts Neuromorphic Chip

Akida Neuromorphic SoC Takes on CNNs

by Kevin Morris

September 11, 2018

Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) have been dominating the discussion on AI advancement for the past couple of years. But CNNs have one glaring weakness – a heavy reliance on massive amounts of multiplication. This huge arithmetic obstacle has led to a plethora of initiatives to accelerate both the training and inference phases of deep learning with CNNs, and a wide variety of hardware and software architectures designed to improve CNN performance and efficiency – both in the data center and at the edge. FPGAs, GPUs, and a range of specialized hardware architectures are competing to capture what is … Read More → "Brainchip Debuts Neuromorphic Chip"

Spray-On Cooling

Imec Develops Cheaper Impingement

by Bryon Moyer

September 10, 2018

There’s nothing new about the need to cool silicon. It’s just that it used to be easy. Relatively.

To be fair, for your average, run-of-the-mill chip, you can still put it in a package with decent thermal resistance and run air over it if you must. Although more and more gadgets are resisting air cooling because fans are big and mechanical and noisy and use power. So more chips are designed with lower power.

Yeah, there are still the occasional water-cooled chips, … Read More → "Spray-On Cooling"

Blockchain is not Bitcoin—Bitcoin is not Blockchain

Blockchain has Far-Reaching Importance for Many Networked Electronic Systems Including IoT Devices

by Steven Leibson

September 6, 2018

EEJournal readers ought to be very familiar with Bitcoin by now. All of the computing fruits of semiconductor technology, including microprocessors, GPUs, FPGAs, and ultimately ASICs, have been harnessed in the frenzied search for solutions to a mathematical problem that serves as “proof of work” that entitles the bearer to Bitcoin, using the rules originally created by the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto and published in a paper titled, “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System” a decade ago.

Nakamoto’s paper gave the concept of cryptocurrency to the world. It also introduced … Read More → "Blockchain is not Bitcoin—Bitcoin is not Blockchain"

Where Do Silicon Chips Come From, Anyway?

In Which We Describe the Basics of the Entire Semiconductor Industry

by Jim Turley

September 5, 2018

“If you properly clean a room, it gets dirtier before it gets cleaner.” – Chris Rock

The recent news that GlobalFoundries is suspending its 7nm development, possibly forever, has a lot of industry observers asking, “Huh?”

And that’s one of the more eloquent and considered queries. Here at EEJ Global Nerve Center, our mailbag is filled with letters ranging from, “What are the Van Eck effects of predictive branch-cache layouts,” to “Which Android phone should I buy?” We’re nothing if not helpful, so here’s … Read More → "Where Do Silicon Chips Come From, Anyway?"