feature article archive
Subscribe Now

Securing Your System with FPGAs

Security used to be the purview of the select few – those working on defense projects, financial systems, or other “high-security” devices and platforms. Today, however, with IoT, wearables, connected cars, smartphones, tablets, and so forth, everything is connected to everything, and practically every device owned by every human on earth is able to make safety- and financially-critical transactions. That means security has become important in just about every system we design today.

Unfortunately, security has to be designed into our systems from the ground up. There’s no such thing as a padlock … Read More → "Securing Your System with FPGAs"

Nav Grade Goes MEMS

OK, so, those of you who have notions about consumer-grade inertial measurement units (IMUs)? Listen, I need you to do something for me now. Actually, not for me, but for your own good. I need you to sidle over to the nearest chair and ease into a comfortable seated position. Believe me, you’ll thank me in a minute.

Because today we’re going to look at a corner of the market we haven’t explored before. We’ve spent untold hours on … Read More → "Nav Grade Goes MEMS"

Amazon’s Head in the Cloud

At face value, it is a bit of a brain twister: Amazon’s goal of being the “everything store” on the one hand, that is, and its massive cloud services business on the other. At first glance, not exactly peanut butter and chocolate. Walmart and Costco are not actively hawking their data processing capabilities—which one imagines as quite formidable—on the open market.

Turn the clock back a few years and it makes sense. Amazon developed their massive datacenters in-house because their requirements could not be readily met with existing solutions. As time passed, they developed … Read More → "Amazon’s Head in the Cloud"

New Year’s Resolution: 1024 x 768

With a quick polish of the crystal ball (okay, it’s a snow globe) and a tip of the hat to Scott Hilburn, I do hereby make my official and semi-seriously considered prognostications for The Year in Technology, 2015 Edition. 

  • Tesla Motors will reject separate takeover offers from Daimler Benz, BMW, and Nissan/Renault. The battery-car manufacturer has been flying high lately, even becoming the #1 selling car – of any kind – in the country of Norway. That success has attracted interested suitors eager to learn about … Read More → "New Year’s Resolution: 1024 x 768"

Driver’s Ed for FPGAs

Letting go of the steering wheel for the first time will be a terrifying milestone for most drivers. As engineers, we have all known for years that self-driving and assisted-driving cars were coming, and as a group we have a unique appreciation for the myriad challenges – both technical and social – that lie between us and safer roads. 

On the technical side, it is clear that a robust, safe self-driving system requires the aggregation of massive amounts of data from a diverse array of sensors, and the software that processes those inputs will be … Read More → "Driver’s Ed for FPGAs"

Hardware Security: Getting Serious

There’s the textbook version of the tech business, where hard-working innovators push the edges of technology, bringing ever-more-efficient products into a free market where consumers reward those who best meet consumer needs.

And then there’s the real world, where “innovation” can sometimes mean finding the cleverest ways to cheat.

I mean, yeah, I know that bad guys are out there trying to steal our identities and more. And that shortcuts will always be taken by some. But I have to admit that, as I sat through an ICCAD session on hardware security, the … Read More → "Hardware Security: Getting Serious"

More Indoor Location Services

We’ve talked before about the challenges of navigating indoors. It was a hard problem then; it remains a hard problem today, with numerous technological contributions coming here and there to help out. For the most part, there’s still no blockbuster new technology to put render all that has come before obsolete, but what follows is a look at a couple of recently-announced real-time location service (RTLS) approaches that continue to build on this pile of solutions.

Be the Spoon

< … Read More → "More Indoor Location Services"

Instruments for the Black-Turtleneck Crowd

“Oh, and one more thing…”

You can almost hear the ghost of Steve Jobs introducing the Saleae Logic Pro 16, gesturing to a rear-projection screen as he slips the device out of his pocket. It’s that kind of logic analyzer.

Huh, what? Trendy, stylish, desirable test instruments?

Believe it. The Logic Pro 16 is a hardware logic analyzer that even a design aesthete would love. It’s the lab instrument for the SoHo/Noe Valley/Pearl district crowd. And I have one. And no, you can’t borrow it.

Allow me to … Read More → "Instruments for the Black-Turtleneck Crowd"

Lucio on EDA Investment

So you’ve been toiling away in the depths of the EDA world and you are struck by an idea of monumental brilliance and potential. You drop what you’re doing and go off into a cave for a while to flesh it out to the point where you can solicit a hearty investment by a forward-thinking manager of an aggressive investment fund.

What are your chances?

It certainly won’t come as a surprise that you’ve got more than one roadblock to get by. It’s not an easy investment environment out there – … Read More → "Lucio on EDA Investment"

electronica 2014

Electronica, the enormous “trade fair for electronic components, systems, applications and services”, to quote the organisers, was nearly a month ago. So why have I waited this long to report on it?  Mainly because I needed the time to recover and to try to get a perspective on what I saw and heard during three days packed with meetings interspersed with long walks.

Looking back to the year electronica first took place, 1964 was the year that I Want to Hold Your Hand triggered Beatle-mania (and the Rolling Stones released their first album), US President Lyndon … Read More → "electronica 2014"

featured blogs
Apr 24, 2026
A thought experiment in curiosity, confusion, and cosmic consequences....