A couple of months back, Open Silicon announced an HBM2 IP subsystem. Those of us who don’t deal on a daily basis with – what to call it? High intensity memory? – might be vaguely aware that some standards of some sort exist, but are used by other people. Which means we keep but a vague impression of what it’s all about: stacks of memory or some such craziness.
But there’s more to the story than that, … Read More → "HBM vs. HMC"
It’s a traditional Silicon Valley rite of passage. Sometimes welcomed, sometimes dreaded, it’s the quaintly named “exit.” As in, here’s how the investors can pull their money out – hopefully with a nice return to show for their efforts. To the rest of us, it may be a buy-out (AKA merger AKA acquisition) or a new round of financing (with a change of investors) or even an initial public offering (IPO). IPOs used to be all the rage until the market got more demanding (and abuses were slapped down). Obviously, they still happen, but they’re less … Read More → "MSIG and SEMI Come Together"
It’s been a fantastic year here at EE Journal. Our team has enjoyed bringing you the latest news, analysis, and insight into the fast-changing world of electronic engineering innovation. We have watched the IoT transform from buzzword into nascent reality. We have seen massive consolidation in the semiconductor industry. We have witnessed the birth of a new era in the global computing infrastructure, as software slowly becomes the enabler of everything.
At the same time, we have felt danger looming as safety and security in our systems prove to be bigger challenges … Read More → "Best of 2016"
Sports is all about competition. But some sports promote a particular form of camaraderie that keeps the competition going, but without the aggression. Skateboarding is one such sport.
To my mind, it’s an insanely difficult sport. My son picked it up at a young age, and I watched as he worked over and over to nail his first Ollie. They say that first one takes about a year to get, and then the rest starts to go faster. But make no mistake: an Ollie involves pushing down on a skateboard in such a … Read More → "Open Hardware, Open Process"
Security and Safety: they would seem to be separate system considerations. Security is the flavor of the year, with everyone belatedly signing on to its importance (even as Yahoo announces another BILLION accounts hacked). Safety, on the other hand, is generally relegated as an issue to those systems that can cause harm. That’s traditionally been military and aerospace, largely; we can now add self-driving (or even driver-assisted) cars to that august community.
But it’s funny: in so many conversations that I’ve had recently, security and safety seem to coexist in the same discussion. When … Read More → "Security and Safety"
“You’d be surprised how hard it can often be to translate an action into an idea.” – Karl Kraus
“Siri, launch my compiler.”
“Alexa, run a.out.”
“Hey, Google, execute that old CP/M program for me.”
“Cortana, halt and catch fire. Ha-ha.”
Wouldn’t it be cool if your personal digital assistant could execute any task, and any program, on any operating system? We’ve been designing computers for several lifetimes now. Why can’t they be universal?
We all remember reruns of Star Trek … Read More → "Calling All Universal Translators"
Lattice Semiconductor revels in being the holder of the “World’s Smallest FPGAs” title. While Xilinx and Intel/Altera boast about gazillions of LUTs, scores of DSP blocks, and multi-gigabit SerDes packed into silicon platforms that you could probably land a small helicopter on, Lattice attacks the opposite end of the spectrum – FPGAs so small you could sneeze and knock a dozen off your lab bench by accident.
Five years ago, Lattice acquired the iCE family along with FPGA startup SiliconBlue, who specialized in tiny, one-time-programmable, microwatt-sipping FPGAs, targeted at the high-volume consumer … Read More → "Lattice iCE40 UltraPlus"
Depending on which article or social media post you read, people are either excited about self-driving vehicles or they’re petrified. (Truck and taxi drivers are more of the latter, although for different reasons.)
And what makes people so nervous? To sum it up in one word, algorithms! And if our only experience with algorithms is social media, then we ought to be afraid. But, realistically, there’s no lack of awareness of the seriousness and safety requirements for automated vehicles. Cars have their own safety standard, ISO 26262, one of the specialty standards under the umbrella of … Read More → "Tool Documentation for Safe Automobiles"
A few weeks ago, if I had heard of the RISC-V Instruction Set Architecture (ISA), it was only in passing. How things have changed. Kevin Morris has covered the announcement that RISC-V IP is available for a wide range of Microsemi’s FPGAs. Around the 5th RISC-V workshop in November, there was a flurry of announcements. At several meetings and conferences I have attended, RISC-V has been discussed in the informal sessions. And now there are rumours in various places on the Internet that Samsung is planning a … Read More → "Is Open Source Hardware Growing Up?"
“The fault… is not in our stars, but in ourselves…” – William Shakespeare, “Julius Caesar”
It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
ARM-based processors were supposed to be cheaper, more energy-efficient, cooler running, and maybe even faster than those rusty, old, clapped-out Intel x86 chips. Right?
Right? So what happened? Why do we still inhabit a world powered by Intel servers instead of shiny new ARM machines? What happened to the New Cloud?
We happened. We’re resisting our own advancements. Well, some of us, anyway. Oh, sure, a … Read More → "The Triumph of Inertia"
