Articles – Page 157

August 11, 2016

Makers are the epitome of what big chip vendors used to consider a waste of time for their valuable salesfolk. “Fred in the shed,” as they said. No volume, no ROI. “Stick with Tier 1s.”

But you Makers are now in demand, given that you’re particularly good at things required for Internet of Things (IoT) types of systems, taking readily-available platforms and making them do cool things – things that larger companies are now more interested in; things that could potentially sell in high volumes. I don’t know whether chip guys are now selling to Makers, … Read More → "Custom Silicon for Makers"

Dichotomy and Contradiction

Don’t Ever Tell Your Customers What Your Product Can Actually Do

by Jim Turley

August 10, 2016

“Now all restaurants are Taco Bell.” – Lt. Lenina Huxley, “Demolition Man”

Who remembers the one-word tag line, “Beatrice,” at the end of TV commercials?

That single word – was it a name? – a hidden command to action? – tacked onto the ends of seemingly unrelated TV commercials airing in the 1980s neatly summed up a different word: hubris.

You see, Beatrice Foods was a large and successful conglomerate that owned many smaller but better-known companies, such as Avis Rent-a-Car, Tropicana, Playtex, Good & … Read More → "Dichotomy and Contradiction"

A New Era for EDA?

What’s Next After Moore’s Law

by Kevin Morris

August 9, 2016

The EDA industry has always been a bit of an enigma. On one hand, EDA has provided the essential technology that has enabled Moore’s Law to proceed for half a century. Without the incredible accomplishments of EDA’s engineers, today’s multi-billion transistor marvels would never have had the chance to exist, and their world-changing capabilities would never have seen the light of day.

Yep, that’s right. I’m saying that without EDA we would not have Pokemon Go.

At the same time, however, EDA has struggled … Read More → "A New Era for EDA?"

A Four-Way Vehicular Radio Module

Redpine Bets on 802.11p Over LTE-V

by Bryon Moyer

August 8, 2016

Redpine Signals is placing a bet. It might have been less of a bet a year or two ago, but things change, and the future isn’t as obvious as it once might have seemed.

See, they’re betting that IEEE 802.11p will rule the roadways in the coming time when our cars will carry on intense conversations with each other and with the things around them. Folks have been working on that standard for a while, and it appeared to be the default nominee for the job. Then along came a less-expected candidate, and the odds … Read More → "A Four-Way Vehicular Radio Module"

ARM: We’re Turning Japanese

SoftBank Acquisition of ARM Could be a Big Deal – Or Not

by Jim Turley

August 2, 2016

“Everyone avoids me like a cyclone ranger.” – The Vapors

You can stop reading now.

Really, there’s nothing to see here, folks. Go on about your business. Just another humdrum $32 billion acquisition of one of the industry’s most important players. Heck, that’s less than NFL players get paid right out of college, amiright?

As you’ve no doubt heard, read, and tweeted, ARM is in the process of being acquired by SoftBank for the aforementioned sum of cash. Yup – the world’s most popular microprocessor-IP vendor is … Read More → "ARM: We’re Turning Japanese"

Spicing Up SPICE

ProPlus Claims to Do Full SPICE Faster than Fast

by Bryon Moyer

August 1, 2016

Years ago, my brother was visiting relatives in Austria. As the story goes, the family was aristocratic once upon a time, and, while that didn’t devolve into riches and status (or even awareness of that fact) for my family, it was still part of the relatives’ mindset. Which gave them a sense of entitlement and “natural” superiority.

So when my brother was describing the California climate, within which he had lived for most of his life, and where you go from, oh, say, April through October without rain – a climate distinctly different from central Europe, he … Read More → "Spicing Up SPICE"

BREXIT, ARM and Uncertainty

It is Too Early to Tell

by Dick Selwood

July 28, 2016

In the last few days, I heard that Garrison Keillor will no longer be intoning, “It has been a quiet week in Lake Woebegone…” He is retiring. Yes, even in Europe we have heard the Prairie Home Companion, and here in Britain none of the last few weeks have been quiet weeks.

The story goes that Zhou Enlai, the Chinese Communist Leader, when asked about the impact of the French Revolution, said, “It is too early to say.” The myth-busting wisdom is that he was talking not about the storming of the Bastille in 1789 and the subsequent … Read More → "BREXIT, ARM and Uncertainty"

Treading on Thin Air

Engineering the Second Generation

by Kevin Morris

July 27, 2016

Somewhere, in a nondescript cubicle in building number umpteen of a multi-billion-dollar multinational multi-technology conglomerate, an engineer sits at a lab bench staring at an eye diagram on six-figure scope. It’s the same every day. Any time he is not in a meeting or writing a status report, he sits in this lab and eats and breathes signal integrity. He has almost no concept of the end product that will incorporate his work. His entire universe is jitter, pre-emphasis, equalization, noise, amplitudes, and bit-error rates. For him, time stands still – in the picoseconds.

Processing Parallel Worlds

MIT Swarm Processor Shows Spectacular Early Results

by Jim Turley

July 26, 2016

“Too many cooks spoil the broth” — proverb

Programming with parallelism is sometimes illustrated with a kitchen example. One cook working by himself has to do everything in sequence: turn on the stove, mix the batter, pour the sauce, grill the meat, etc. That’s serial programming with no parallelism. That’s how all computers worked until fairly recently.

But two cooks can work faster than one. While one stirs the batter, the other can be checking on the meat or seasoning the broth. Ideally, the work gets done twice as fast. In practice, … Read More → "Processing Parallel Worlds"

Keeping the FCC and Open Source Happy

Prpl: Routers Can Be Secure and Open

by Bryon Moyer

July 25, 2016

The FCC is worried. You and they spend all this time and energy getting your radio certified, and then some bozo hacks in, changes how the radio works, and puts you out of spec.

And so, back in early 2015, the FCC issued some guidelines or questions regarding WiFi devices – particularly home routers – in an effort to ensure that your radio isn’t hackable.

The result has been that some router makers have simply locked down the platform so that it’s no longer possible to do after-market modifications, and this has caused an outcry by … Read More → "Keeping the FCC and Open Source Happy"