Articles – Page 178

May 21, 2015

This is yet another tale from the long saga of the Quest to Build a Better Battery. We’re all waiting for the day when we can unplug everything and yet never have our batteries run dry, so, for the time being, battery technology is cool.

This tale is very specific. It’s about building a lithium-based battery with a lithium anode. Why is that a goal? Well, it always was the goal for the best performing lithium battery, but inconvenient problems like potential fires have gotten in the way. So we’ve used carbon-based anodes as … Read More → "A Dendrite-Free Lithium Anode"

Buses, Windows, and You

Where is the Real Value in Embedded Engineering?

by Jim Turley

May 20, 2015

“I suppose that even the most pleasurable of imaginable occupations, that of batting baseballs through the windows of the RCA Building, would pall a little as the days ran on.” – James Thurber

What do buses, windows, and iTunes have in common? They’re all engineering successes that don’t really look like, well, engineering successes.

Lemme ’splain.

This week I spoke with two different companies that sell on-chip networks for SoC designers. They’re IP companies, which is to say they license their R&D efforts to other hardware engineers … Read More → "Buses, Windows, and You"

The Hardware Vanishing Point

Someday, Will it All be Software?

by Kevin Morris

May 19, 2015

The disciplines of hardware and software engineering have always been intertwined and symbiotic – like the yin and yang of some bizarre abstract beast. Software cannot exist without hardware to execute it, of course, and most hardware today is designed in the service of software. The vast majority of systems being designed today involve a mix of both elements working together, with software steadily inheriting more and more of the complexity load.

Let’s think about that for a minute.

On the one hand, we have digital hardware technology that … Read More → "The Hardware Vanishing Point"

A Stictionless NEMS Switch

Or, as MIT Calls It, a Squitch

by Bryon Moyer

May 18, 2015

Mechanical switches are as old as, well, electricity. Whether you picture the giant two-handed switches in horror movies or the simple wall switches in our houses, we’re used to making contact metal-to-metal.

So transistors used as switches, as old as they may seem, are the newcomers. The thing is, they can be made so small that, within the world of digital logic, we’ve never looked back at their mechanical predecessors – until now.

The advent of MEMS and NEMS technology is bringing mechanical concepts, which have been on the sidelines for years, back into … Read More → "A Stictionless NEMS Switch"

Eschew the Real World

Imperas Thinks Software Should Be Designed More Like Hardware

by Jim Turley

May 13, 2015

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” – Margaret Mead

Imperas employs a grand total of ten people: eight Britons and two Americans. Yet the company is taking on an entire industry – indeed, an entire ethos and culture – and attempting to turn it on its head.

In short, Imperas thinks you’re doing it all wrong.

Writing software, that is. You’re doing it wrong. And you’re doing it badly. Your code is buggy, it’ … Read More → "Eschew the Real World"

Altera Turbos the Tools

Spectra-Q Accelerates Quartus II

by Kevin Morris

May 12, 2015

When people are curious about the performance and capabilities of programmable logic products, they often get buried in the details of the datasheet. It’s easy to get wrapped up in debating LUT counts, Fmax numbers, and a bunch of other silicon-related esoterica that may have little to do with how well a particular device will perform in your application.

You know what matters a lot more than the details of the chips? The performance of the tools.

The under-appreciated universal truth of programmable logic is that tools usually … Read More → "Altera Turbos the Tools"

Faster Extraction

Mentor’s xACT Wrestles with FinFETs, Corners

by Bryon Moyer

May 11, 2015

So you build a circuit with a couple of transistors here and a couple of transistors there and you want to see how it’s going to operate. So you’ll simulate (or do signal integrity analysis or whatever other study you’re interested in). But you need to tell the tool about your circuit. So… do you just say, “Yeah, I’ve got a couple transistors here and a couple resistors there – please go calculate”?

Ah, if only it were so simple. Of course that won’t work – because it ignores all of the unstated interactions … Read More → "Faster Extraction"

The RSA Conference

Advanced Persistent Threats Meet Advanced Persistent Marketing

by Jim Turley

May 7, 2015

I attended the RSA Conference in San Francisco last week. I would have posted this article earlier, but it took some time to decrypt my notes.

I’ve covered Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) in a number of articles this year; so many articles, in fact, that it would be cumbersome to provide links to them here (feel free to use the search box). Little did I realize at the time I wrote those articles that protecting against APTs is now job #1 in the cyber-security world. Or so it seemed at the RSA Conference, where you couldn’ … Read More → "The RSA Conference"

MIPS: Many Interesting Possibilities for Students

Imagination Gives Universities a Free MIPS Processor to Learn From

by Jim Turley

May 6, 2015

Trade schools and universities are two sides of the same educational coin. Broadly speaking, trade schools teach you how to work with your hands, while universities teach you how to hunt for low-wage jobs. No, wait… that’s liberal arts colleges.

Trade schools teach skills. Universities teach politics. No, that’s not it, either. Universities feed your head, medical schools your heart, trade schools your hands, and health… is uh, the 4-H Club.

Whatever the actual institution, most students studying Computer Science or Electrical Engineering rarely … Read More → "MIPS: Many Interesting Possibilities for Students"

The Changing Customizability Continuum

ASIC, ASSP, CSSP, FPGA, SoC, MPSoC, GPU, MPU, CPU

by Kevin Morris

May 5, 2015

We spend a lot of time in the semiconductor business trying to put chips into bins. We in the press and those in the analyst community are constantly struggling to label particular semiconductor devices, and financial types are always trying to figure out what “market” a particular chip belongs in. As Moore’s Law has pushed us into higher and higher levels of integration, most of the interesting devices out there have a little bit of everything in them.

Consider, for example, the upcoming Zynq UltraScale+ devices recently announced by Xilinx. Even though … Read More → "The Changing Customizability Continuum"