Articles – Page 17

Measuring Picovolts and Femtoamps

January 16, 2025

I’m ashamed to admit that I don’t know as much about the topic of test and measurement (T&M) as perhaps I should. My only excuse is that there’s so much to learn and I am a bear of little brain (and my little bear brain is pretty much full).

There are lots of things I’ve not done in my life. One of them is to build my own digital multimeter (DMM) comprising a voltmeter (to measure voltage), an ammeter (to measure current), and an ohmmeter (to measure … Read More → "Measuring Picovolts and Femtoamps"

ST’s newest serial EEPROMs support both byte and page access

by Steven Leibson

January 13, 2025

In 1973, the Miller Brewing Company launched the “lite” beer revolution with an ad campaign that proclaimed “Tastes great. Less filling.” The company’s ads backed up the slogan by showing very masculine athletes including Ray Nitschke, Ben Davidson, Bubba Smith, and John Madden drinking (or at least holding) glasses of the lite beer, to make it look more manly. Going back a bit earlier, the Peter Paul Candy Company used a musical jingle that starts with the line, “Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t,” to define the key difference between its Mounds and … Read More → "ST’s newest serial EEPROMs support both byte and page access"

AMD ups the ante in the RF-enabled FPGA poker game with the Versal RF family

by Steven Leibson

January 13, 2025

AMD has made another play in the poker game for RF-capable FPGAs against Altera. AMD’s opening ante, actually Xilinx’s opening ante, was the introduction in early 2017 of the first RFSoC, based on the existing Zynq UltraScale+ SoC. Altera’s counter, in late 2022 back when Altera was still Intel, was to introduce the Agilex 9 Direct-RF series of FPGAs. The two companies have taken different manufacturing approaches to making these RF-enabled FPGAs.

AMD took the monolithic route, which fabricates high-speed analog converters on the same die as the FPGA fabric. Conversely, Altera employs … Read More → "AMD ups the ante in the RF-enabled FPGA poker game with the Versal RF family"

This One’s for the Techno-Dweebs

by Max Maxfield

January 9, 2025

I’m afraid I’m in a techno-dweeby mood at this moment in time. My head is filled with thoughts that are bouncing around my noggin like demented ping pong balls. Speaking of which, do you remember my 12×12 ping pong ball display?

If so, then—as you may recall—the last thing I did with this bodacious beauty was to implement a Lava Lamp Effect. This program employs something called Read More → "This One’s for the Techno-Dweebs"

Ask Steve: Career and management advice from the former CEO of Microchip

by Steven Leibson

January 8, 2025

It’s a new year and New Year’s resolutions may be on your mind. You’ll find some helpful hints on making resolutions, or just getting your career into gear, in Steve Sanghi’s new book, “Ask Steve: Everyday business advice from a successful CEO.” Sanghi based his new book on a decade’s worth of advice columns he wrote for the “Arizona Republic” newspaper from 2004 to 2014. The advice Sangi dispenses is based on his four decades of industry experience, starting with Intel and ending with him extracting Microchip, a growing semiconductor company, from the ashes … Read More → "Ask Steve: Career and management advice from the former CEO of Microchip"

One More Step on the Path to AIIE (AI-In-Everything)

by Max Maxfield

January 7, 2025

Almost anyone involved in developing new products today wants those products to have an artificial intelligence (AI) component [for the purposes of this column we will take AI to embrace machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL)]. The problem is that AI is still very new in the scheme of things—everyone has heard about it, almost everybody uses it, but relatively few people know how to implement it.

A case in point is Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), which are companies that make parts or products for other companies to use in their … Read More → "One More Step on the Path to AIIE (AI-In-Everything)"

I See Holograms Everywhere

by Max Maxfield

January 2, 2025

I have seen the future, and it’s going to be even more amazing than our wildest dreams. Do I have your attention? Good. Then I’ll begin…

Have you seen The Time Machine movie? Well, I should say “movies” because there was the classic 1960 version starring Rod Taylor, Yvette Mimieux, and Alan Young, and then … Read More → "I See Holograms Everywhere"

Augmenting an Existing 2D CMOS Sensor to Provide 3D Depth Perception

by Max Maxfield

December 26, 2024

The term “machine vision” refers to the technologies and processes by which machines extract, analyze, and interpret visual information from the physical world using sensors and computational algorithms. It enables machines to “see,” make decisions, and perform actions based on their visual inputs.

While 2D machine vision is great—I won’t hear a bad word said about 2D—it must be acknowledged that everything is better in 3D. Being equipped with 3D depth perception provides machine vision systems with more complete data for their AI applications. This enables robots, automobiles, and other … Read More → "Augmenting an Existing 2D CMOS Sensor to Provide 3D Depth Perception"

The Day of the Drum Machine

by Steven Leibson

December 23, 2024

Ikutaro Kakehashi founded Roland Corporation in Osaka on April 18, 1972. He’d just resigned from his first company, Ace Electronic Industries, the previous month. Ace made electronic rhythm machines for electronic organs, and its largest customer was the Hammond Organ Company. When Roland opened for business, it had no products. Kakehashi quickly developed electronic drum or rhythm machines to start the revenue stream that would help him realize his bigger dream of delivering a broad range of electronic musical instruments to musicians around the world who longed for ways to make new and novel sounds. That first year, … Read More → "The Day of the Drum Machine"

Bringing Innate Intelligence to Trillions of Devices

by Max Maxfield

December 19, 2024

Did you ever wonder why they (whoever “they” are) chose the prefix “tera” to mean trillion (as in 10^12, or 1,000,000,000,000)? Well, it’s because because this comes from the Greek word teras, meaning “monster” or “marvel.” Thus, “tera” was chosen to reflect the large size of a trillion, implying something vast and extraordinary, much like the way a monster or marvel would stand proud in the crowd. You’re welcome.

The reason I mention this here is that I was just chatting with Sumeet Kumar, who is the CEO at Read More → "Bringing Innate Intelligence to Trillions of Devices"