Articles – Page 165

March 1, 2016

In most professions there is a notion of history, legacy, and apprenticeship. On top of the education and qualifications required just to become a member of the professional community, there is an equally important tribal knowledge that is passed down through generations of practitioners. Law, medicine, finance, real estate – pick a profession and you’ll find a cultural inertia, a resistance to rapid change – a slowly moving mass that damps out unwelcome random accelerations.

None of these other professions has ever experienced a Moore’s Law.

We have given … Read More → "Back in My Day"

A New Neural Approach

Desperately Seeking the Ahah Moment

by Bryon Moyer

February 29, 2016

It’s been introduced as nothing less than a new way of computing certain kinds of problems. It’s another approach to computing more the way the brain does it than the way Mr. Von Neumann does it. Which is to say, using orders of magnitude less power than Mr. Von Neumann would consume. (Yes, given a chicken in every pot and a nuclear reactor in every backyard, Mr. Von Neumann can do most anything…)

A recent announcement by Knowm (pronounced like “gnome”) … Read More → "A New Neural Approach"

May You Live in Interesting Times

Already 2016 is a Very Interesting Time

by Dick Selwood

February 25, 2016

I was rather saddened to learn that the ancient Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times” is probably a 1930s invention, because all the signs are that 2016 will be the sort of interesting times that the curse would appreciate.

Each January, Malcolm Penn, of analyst company Future Horizons, reviews the semiconductor industry’s performance and makes predictions for the coming year – something he has been doing for a quarter of a century with pretty good accuracy.

An important part of his approach is an assessment of the broader economic climate. What follows is an … Read More → "May You Live in Interesting Times"

The Nürnberg Trials

Competing Vendors All Announce New Processors in Germany

by Jim Turley

February 24, 2016

“If two men in business always agree, one of them is unnecessary” – William Wrigley, Jr.

WARNING: This posting may explode without notice. We have temporarily encased ARM, x86, and PowerVR in one container for the time being, but it’s an unstable concoction and could detonate at any moment.

Still here? Splendid. As you’re assuredly aware, there’s big doings in Nürnberg (or Nuremberg, for Anglophones) this week. It’s Embedded World, so the whole world of embedded vendors, developers, and hangers-on are assembled in the medieval Bavarian city. With that … Read More → "The Nürnberg Trials"

The Tao of P-Channel MOSFETs

Changing the World, One Analog Transistor at a Time

by Kevin Morris

February 23, 2016

Robert Chao is what many of us dreamed we’d become when we first started engineering school. We loved technology. We knew we were intelligent. We wanted to build our skills and increase our knowledge. We wanted to apply that education along with our natural passion and talent to solve important problems. We craved that creative rush, that eureka moment when we realized we had a slightly better idea, an improvement, a challenge to the status quo. We wanted to change the world – one transistor at a time.

For most of us, Dr. … Read More → "The Tao of P-Channel MOSFETs"

Are IoT Standards Really Standards?

Navigating Alliances and Standards Containers

by Bryon Moyer

February 22, 2016

When it comes to the Internet of Things, the cry went up a couple of years ago: “We need standards!”

And so now one of the common questions I’ll ask is whether a given technology or approach is proprietary or being standardized. That should be an easy question with an easy up/down answer, but it turns out to be muddier than that. It’s almost as if the proprietary world has wised up and noted… hmmm… “standards-based” is a good thing to have on a data sheet. So now there are “standards” that aren’t … Read More → "Are IoT Standards Really Standards?"

A Different View of FPGA

Lattice Lays an Alternative Course

by Kevin Morris

February 17, 2016

For as long as most of us can remember, the FPGA game has been about bigger, faster, louder – more LUTs, more IOs, faster SerDes, more DSP – the list of things the leading vendors have piled onto tiny squares of silicon boggles the mind. The fundamental strategy has been the same: Make the FPGA the center of your system. Replace the ASIC or ASSP with an FPGA, and reap the benefits of programmability and flexibility. Of course, there has always been a “catch.” FPGAs are more expensive, more power-hungry, and slower than their task-optimized ASIC/ASSP brethren. The … Read More → "A Different View of FPGA"

Software Is Free — Sometimes

Microchip Makes MPLAB Xpress Available Online for PIC Developers

by Jim Turley

February 16, 2016

“You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.” – old proverb

Cloud-based thinking has affected – inflicted? – most aspects of our business now. We have cloud-based file storage, software-as-a-service, and remotely hosted search engines, user interfaces, and game hubs. Most of this is an improvement, and an excellent use of the prevailing technology. Some other parts? Eh.

As someone observed at a recent technology conference, “Remember, there is no cloud. It’s just someone else’s computer.”

One of the better uses of the technology is cloud-based … Read More → "Software Is Free — Sometimes"

A Unified Chip/Package/Board Flow

ANSYS Brings Mechanical and Electrical Together

by Bryon Moyer

February 15, 2016

ANSYS has recently released version 17 of their tools, simply referred to as ANSYS 17. The improvements they made cover a lot of ground, much of it having to do with mechanical design. Which might lead you to think, “oh, this is a mechanical tool; I can move on, since it’s not for me.” But be not so hasty: we’ll return to this in a minute.

Their theme for the release is 10x, meaning lots of things are 10x better. 10x is a convenient number ( … Read More → "A Unified Chip/Package/Board Flow"

Shasta Has a High Peak

Soft Machines’ VISC Processor Looks Darn Lofty in Comparison Tests

by Jim Turley

February 10, 2016

“Wagner’s music is better than it sounds.” – Mark Twain

They say seeing is believing. Speaking as a professional skeptic, I’ll withhold judgement until I’ve seen one of these things in real life. But I gotta tell ya, it’s looking pretty interesting so far.

The thing in question is the VISC processor from Soft Machines. You remember VISC from our earlier coverage in October, 2015; December, 2014; and Read More → "Shasta Has a High Peak"