Articles – Page 141

July 5, 2017

“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” – traditional proverb

Let the culling commence.

There is apparently no “IoT” in “Intel.” For the umpteenth time, Intel has killed off an embedded product that it all-too-recently hyped as the greatest thing since canned beer. You live and you learn.

Just a few days after it toe-tagged Itanium, Intel whacked three products from the opposite end of its line card, namely Galileo, Edison, and Joule. … Read More → "Intel Kills Off Embedded Boards"

Patent Trolls Take a Hike

U.S. Supreme Court Decision Will Make Trolling Less Attractive

by Jim Turley

June 28, 2017

“Patents are like fertilizer. If you apply too many… you can leach the land, making growth more difficult.” – Alex Tabarrok

If my tree accidentally lands in your yard, can you drag me to Saudi Arabia to sue me? If you get shortchanged at a Boston coffee shop, can the shopkeeper be punished in Singapore? Do the laws in Botswana limit the time you can park in a red zone? If the mayor of Canberra, Australia raises taxes, do you have to pay them?

And what does Kool-Aid have to do with property values … Read More → "Patent Trolls Take a Hike"

Business Model Bingo

Matching the Machine to the Money

by Kevin Morris

June 27, 2017

In the old days, business models were pretty straightforward situations. If you were in retail or distribution – you bought stuff and sold it for more. If you were in manufacturing, you made stuff and sold it. If you were in services, you did stuff and charged by the hour or by the service. There wasn’t much creativity involved. Careful choice of business model just wasn’t a critical factor in your ability to make a living.

In the tech industry, Moore’s Law changed all that – and not necessarily for the better. When the entire economy … Read More → "Business Model Bingo"

More Benchmarks from EEMBC

The IoT Gets Some Attention

by Bryon Moyer

June 26, 2017

Everyone loves a hype cycle – at least until the disenchantment phase kicks in. Nothing spoils a party like someone demanding more than just words on a brochure. I mean, after all, anyone should be able to call their widget the highest-performance, lowest-power thing ever, right? Requiring actual evidence is such a downer.

And if you’re talking about the Internet of Things (IoT), then… well, where do you even start? You’ve got edge nodes – the gadgetry containing sensors and/or actuators; you’ve got local computation in the gateway (maybe); you’ve got the cloud; you’ … Read More → "More Benchmarks from EEMBC"

MIPS Spins Its Wheels

New I6500-F CPU Aimed at Self-Driving Cars, Scary Industrial Robots

by Jim Turley

June 21, 2017

Porsche is a driver’s car – a performance car… but it’s got no cup holders.” – Jason McCoy

You want the 140-character version? MIPS has a new processor with parity.

You want the longer, more detailed version? Uh… MIPS has a new processor with parity… and some ECC. And some additional technical documentation to help with safety certification. But the CPU itself? Pretty much the same one as before.

That’s not to belittle the new I6500-F. I’m sure it was a lot of work, and it’s nice … Read More → "MIPS Spins Its Wheels"

EDA’s Second Chance

Will the FPGA Opportunity Happen Again?

by Kevin Morris

June 20, 2017

They say you don’t often get second chances. Certainly, there are few examples in the technology world where an entire industry blows a big market opportunity, backs away, and then gets another crack at it later. But, that could possibly happen with EDA and FPGAs. We might be on the verge of a time when the EDA industry could patch the big hole in their collective system design dike and take full control of the electronic design process once again.

About two decades ago, the EDA industry became keenly interested in the emergence of FPGA technology. … Read More → "EDA’s Second Chance"

Neural-Net In a Block

Cadence Accelerates the Entire Network

by Bryon Moyer

June 19, 2017

[Editor’s note: this piece has been updated at the end.]

Cadence recently announced neural-network processor IP. It would be pretty simple to jump into the architecture and start from there, but there’s this thing that I don’t think is just me that perhaps we should deal with first.

I see neural networks tossed about all over the place. In none of those places is there ever a description of what neural networks are – in their … Read More → "Neural-Net In a Block"

Achronix Leaps Forward

Strategic Move in Embedded FPGA Arrays

by Kevin Morris

June 14, 2017

With the announcement that the company became profitable in Q1 2017, that year-to-year growth will exceed 700%, and that 2017 revenues will pass the $100 million mark, Achronix has successfully made the challenging transition from speculative FPGA startup to viable, self-sustaining company. This alone is a remarkable achievement, in the wake of numerous well-managed enterprises that tried and failed to reach that same elusive milestone. The road to “profitable FPGA company” is littered with the smoldering remains of decades worth of dead startups.

And, it’s not like Achronix just started out with the perfect plan, or even the building of … Read More → "Achronix Leaps Forward"

The Steady March of Progress

ARM’s New Cortex-A75 is More of the Same, and That’s a Good Thing

by Jim Turley

June 13, 2017

“Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” – George Bernard Shaw

To no one’s great surprise, ARM has released a new set of microprocessor cores.

You could almost set your watch by ARM’s upgrade announcements, so regular and predictable have they become. What’s this – about the umpty-fifth new processor to come out of the British-based, Japanese-owned company in about the last ten years? Do these guys ever take a day off?

ARM has more flavors of CPU than … Read More → "The Steady March of Progress"

Battery Roundup

Storage Worked from All Angles

by Bryon Moyer

June 12, 2017

Batteries have historically been perceived as something of a staid technology – at least in a lot of minds. I remember back when we were diving into 3-V standards at JEDEC many years ago, and we invited battery folks to help advise us. I came away with the distinct sense that battery chemistry was pretty much what it was and would always be. Yeah, I saw you stifling that yawn…

Well, no more. Batteries are what will save the world! Either by powering electric-powered vehicles over distances that now require petrol or by storing and releasing renewable energy, … Read More → "Battery Roundup"