Articles – Page 169

November 30, 2015

Deep in the heart of Portland or Austin or Minneapolis or any of dozens of towns across the nation and the world, Makers are busily building components for the Internet of Things (IoT). Long dismissed as hobbyists unworthy of sales attention, many of these skilled designers are where the IoT rubber hits the road.

Way on the other end of abstraction, folks in the Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) have been expending much effort trying to lay out an IoT framework that might promote interoperability and numerous other desirable traits. Many of these abstract characteristics may, at some … Read More → "The Industrial Internet Reference Architecture"

Wind River Sets Rocket RTOS On Free Trajectory

Company Gives Away the Software; Charges for the Cloud

by Jim Turley

November 25, 2015

It’s a business model as old as time. Give away the product but charge for the service. It works for razors and blades. It works for bands who give away their music but make it up on tour revenues and merch. It works for a lot of software companies, especially in mobile gaming. It even works for drug dealers: The first fix is free, but after that it’ll cost you.

So in a way it’s no surprise that embedded software giant Wind River Systems is giving away one of its real-time operating systems. Indeed, … Read More → "Wind River Sets Rocket RTOS On Free Trajectory"

Marketing Math 201

Up to 5x More Compelling

by Kevin Morris

November 24, 2015

Hello students, please take a seat. I’d like to welcome you to Marketing Mathematics 201. That’s right, compared with other “intro” classes, we have almost 2X the oomph, giving you an estimated 120% more learning with 3/7ths less homework energy expenditure.

If you’ll please look at your syllabus (which, by the way, is 28% shorter than last year’s, while packing in up to 500% more aggregated knowledge) you’ll see that we will have only four effective exams in the course this term (distributed across five discrete tests), reducing exam stress by an … Read More → "Marketing Math 201"

Synopsys Hacked

No Apparent Loss, But What Does It Mean?

by Bryon Moyer

November 23, 2015

Synopsys has joined an illustrious list of high-value names that are members of a growing club: companies that have been hacked.

This week they announced an unauthorized breach in their “EDA, IP and optical products and product license files through its customer-facing license and product delivery system.” They were careful to note that “no customer project or design data in this system was accessed, and there is no indication that this incident affected any other Synopsys systems.” And, critically, “The license and product delivery system does not store personally identifiable information (PII) or payment card information (PCI).” … Read More → "Synopsys Hacked"

Cortex-A35 Is More, Better, Faster

ARM’s Newest CPU Core Is Just Like Its Predecessors, But More So

by Jim Turley

November 18, 2015

“Mom, they did it again!”

How do they do it? The engineers at ARM, I mean. They just keep cranking out new microprocessors, month after month, year after year. And they all look… so much the same.

It’s like Taco Bell: they have just three ingredients but they’re brilliant at mixing them around in different ways to look like new products. It’s impressive, really. And evidently quite profitable.

This week’s 64-bit burrito is ARM’s new Cortex-A35 microprocessor core. The –A35 is expected to replace the existing Cortex-A5 and – … Read More → "Cortex-A35 Is More, Better, Faster"

Monstrous Memory

Altera SiP Brings the Bandwidth

by Kevin Morris

November 17, 2015

Altera quietly announced their new “Stratix 10 DRAM SiP” recently, and the headline almost slipped in below our radar. After all, we’ve been hearing about “Stratix 10” for a while now. We have written about the impressive capabilities it will bring to the table, thanks to substantial architectural advances by Altera and the promise of Intel’s 14nm Tri-Gate (Intel’s term for FinFET) technology. And, “DRAM” is about as exciting as reruns of old Super Bowls.

So, the only thing to catch much attention was the little “SiP” part tacked onto the end … Read More → "Monstrous Memory"

Keeping Your IoT Secrets Secret

Ways to Protect Your Keys

by Bryon Moyer

November 16, 2015

[Editor’s note: this is the sixth in a series on Internet-of-Things security. You can find the introductory piece here and the prior piece here.]

We’ve looked at how Internet of Things (IoT) machines can greet each other and exchange secret passwords to prove that they’re legit. We’ve looked at how to scramble data so that it becomes nothing more than so much gibberish unless you’re … Read More → "Keeping Your IoT Secrets Secret"

Securing the Small Stuff

ARM and ARC Both Introduce Security Features for their MCU Cores

by Jim Turley

November 11, 2015

Two points define a line.* That’s basic geometry. And when two CPU companies – the two biggest CPU companies in the world, no less – both announce similar enhancements to their processors, it defines a trend line. That’s basic marketing.

(^*Yes, I know about the degenerate case where the two points are concurrent, smarty.)

ARM and ARC have both released the first details of their security add-ons for their Cortex-M and ARC EM processor cores, respectively. As a first-order approximation, both enhancements do the same thing. Upon further examination, however, they’re quite … Read More → "Securing the Small Stuff"

Quartus Prime

Altera Kicks Up the Tools

by Kevin Morris

November 10, 2015

It can be tough being in the lead. For years, one of the brightest spots for Altera Corporation in the FPGA market competition with archrival Xilinx, Inc. has been their Quartus II tool suite. It’s no secret that Xilinx struggled with their old ISE tools, ultimately leading to a complete, ground-up redesign. Altera’s Quartus II continued doing its job, while Xilinx had the “new shiny object” – with all the excitement and problems that go along with re-designed tools.

But, what then do you do if you’re Altera? You’ve been … Read More → "Quartus Prime"

Micron’s New NOR Flash Circles Back

From XIP to Serial to XIP All Over Again

by Bryon Moyer

November 9, 2015

It feels just a little bit like a long arc that may actually be looping back onto its origin. Back to the future. Or perhaps ahead to the past.

Our topic for today is NOR flash memory, the introverted and slightly older twin to the better-known NAND flash that powers all those thumb drives that are spilling out of my drawer. Named for their internal architectures, both memories provide non-volatile storage by means of floating gate charge trapping, but NAND works better for random storage; NOR has been more effective for code execution.

At least, … Read More → "Micron’s New NOR Flash Circles Back"