Articles – Page 140

July 26, 2017

“Time moves in one direction, memory in another.” — William Gibson

The first impression wasn’t good. The opening PowerPoint slide showed the usual company logo, some pleasing clipart, and a punchy slogan. It read, “Inventing memory for things™.”

Really? That was the best tagline you could come up with? What did that little bon mot cost you, or was it the third runner-up from the online marketing firm of Bland, Vanilla & Boring? You know, the one you get for an extra $5 when you sign up for their web-hosting services? “Act … Read More → "The Goldilocks of Flash Memory"

QuickLogic Heats Up eFPGA

Putting Programmability into Low Power Designs

by Kevin Morris

July 25, 2017

We’ve written several times now about the numerous advantages of putting FPGA fabric into your ASIC or SoC, rather than parking an FPGA next to it. Most teams designing custom chips these days have some kind of need for the flexibility of programmable logic, whether it’s to manage connectivity with a diverse or changing set of interfaces, perform compute acceleration for complex tasks, fuse data from multiple sensors, or any number of other operations that can’t readily be poured into the concrete of hardened logic. Having a few (or sometimes even a lot) of LUTs lying … Read More → "QuickLogic Heats Up eFPGA"

What Is a Smart City?

Imec’s Living Labs Project May Tell Us

by Bryon Moyer

July 24, 2017

What do you think of when you hear the term “Smart Cities”? Parking apps? Lighting with sensors? Both of those are certainly part of the picture, but, in Europe, the entire picture could go far beyond those applications.

Through a presentation at an Imec event adjacent to their recent ITF event in Antwerp, and bolstered by a conversation with Imec’s John Baekelmans, I saw a far more expansive vision than I’ve seen laid out before. It’s not just about city services; it’s also about promoting business – while trying to balance privacy concerns.

< … Read More →

Making a Connection

Engineering Talent Meets Racing Enthusiasm, Around the Globe

by Jim Turley

July 19, 2017

“The real secret of success is enthusiasm.” – Walter Chrysler

Last week I interviewed a real, live, professional race car engineer for the famous Andretti racing team, whose workshop and garages are based just outside the equally famous racetrack at Indianapolis. And what’s the first thing I learned?

She’s German.

Mechanical engineer Judith HenzelRead More → "Making a Connection"

Aggressive with Passives

Kemet Kicks Up Capacitors

by Kevin Morris

July 18, 2017

Most of us think about capacitors the way a chef thinks about salt – knowing that it’s never the star of the show, having a keen awareness that you need just the right amount, being vaguely conscious of the fact that there are multiple, subtly different types… When we’re debugging our board, there are often times when something mysteriously isn’t working right. When all else fails, we sprinkle on a few more capacitors. It may smooth out something or decouple something or reduce some bounce. Can’t hurt. Might help.

Read More → "Aggressive with Passives"

A New PUF Mechanism

Smaller Cell; Smaller Circuit?

by Bryon Moyer

July 17, 2017

We all know that security is bubbling its way up in importance, and we all probably know that key management is an important part of keeping good security. Nothing ruins a good secret like someone discovering the keys.

There are lots of keys that get tossed about in any given transaction, but many of them are derived ephemeral keys used only for a single session or a single transaction. Those keys will all be generated using the master-of-all-keys, and that’s the key that lives on for the life of … Read More → "A New PUF Mechanism"

Watching the Weightless

Integration Transcends Moore’s Law

by Kevin Morris

July 12, 2017

We engineers like things we can count and measure. Our professional comfort zone is in the metrics, multipliers, and deltas – hard data on which we can rest our reassurances that we’ve progressed – solved the world’s problems one bit at a time. Moore’s Law, of course, is a solid long-arc barometer for the engineering collective – a sequence of numbers on which we can hang our collective hats – carving notches in the stock as we trouble our way toward infinity. And, at some level it is the basis on which we’ve built our businesses, seeking remuneration for … Read More → "Watching the Weightless"

Ignorance Is Bliss

The Zen of User Interfaces, Training, and Management

by Jim Turley

July 11, 2017

“You must unlearn what you have learned.” – Yoda

Learning something new is hard. But un-learning something is even harder. It’s tough to convince people of something they think they already know.

This kōan-like axiom comes into play whenever we design a user interface. A good UI leverages the user’s preconceived notions of how things should work, while avoiding the subtler traps we easily forget. For instance, knobs and dials are meant to be turned, and turning them clockwise increases whatever the knob controls. That unspoken standard seems to be consistent … Read More → "Ignorance Is Bliss"

Automatic Car Driver Detection

What’s the Value to Drivers?

by Bryon Moyer

July 10, 2017

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and, more specifically, Machine Learning (ML) seem finally to have hit the scene in a permanent way. Having grown up watching expert systems and fuzzy logic and other schemes come and go, the stars and planets – not to mention theories, algorithms, and computing power – appear to have aligned to give us something useful.

For a while, ML and “big data” were terms that were tossed liberally about to get attention – in the same way that Internet of Things was (and is). But we’ve seen more and more cases where a press release touting … Read More → "Automatic Car Driver Detection"

Tools for Advanced Packages

No More Designing In Isolation

by Bryon Moyer

July 6, 2017

We’ve blissfully led separate, siloed lives for years. IC designer? Someone’s having trouble routing from your pads? “Not my problem.” Package designer? Electricals on a particular signal are sketchy? “Not my problem.” PCB designer? Someone doesn’t like that the drive on an output isn’t high enough to drive your signal? “Not my problem.” It’s so much easier when you have a restricted scope, and anything outside that scope is someone else’s problem.

But that’s not gonna work so well going forward if you really want to optimize the interactions between … Read More → "Tools for Advanced Packages"