In the fall of last year, I made a stab at proposing a structure for what I perceived as the Internet of Things (IoT). I later realized that there are bigger differences than I had appreciated between the various IoT incarnations: consumer, industrial, and maybe even enterprise (I haven’t really dug into that last one yet). So the first “IoT Breakdown” really applies only to the Consumer IoT (CIoT).
< … Read More → "IoT Ring Theory"Excuse me while I juggle these flaming chainsaws. While riding a unicycle on a tightrope crossing over Niagara Falls. Blindfolded. Challenging enough for ya?
That’s essentially what a new company called Soft Machines is attempting. It’s a new firm with an entirely new microprocessor design that is taking on the two toughest challenges in the business: how to increase performance while reducing power, and how to run programs written for other processors. Oh, and they’re competing with ARM for embedded RISC processor cores. And then they’ll be taking on Intel and AMD with … Read More → "New Processor Promises It All"
There are times when you shouldn’t really think too deeply about things. Last week I was driving along the motorway from London to Winchester. While accelerating to overtake, I saw the engine pass through 4,000 rpm, and I wondered about each piston moving from stationary at top dead centre to stationary at bottom dead centre and then back to top dead centre 50 times a second. (Geeky? Moi?) Sadly, I can’t perform in my head the sum that would calculate the speed at which each piston was moving at its fastest, but it must be pretty speedy, and that … Read More → "Spaghetti versus ISO 26262"
So I hear you’re going to try to build an SoC. Good luck; you’ve got lots of work ahead.
First you have to come up with an architecture. Then you need to design all of the blocks yourself. Then you need to write all of the software that’s going to run on this beastie. By yourself.
That’s the easy part. When you’re done with that, you have to verify the whole thing. Yes, you have to design everything and finish it all before you can start your verification. I just … Read More → "Finding the Right Prototype"
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness… it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair… we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way…” Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
Is AMD the best microprocessor maker in the world, or the worst? Is the company more competitive than it’s ever been, or about to hit bottom? Are they blazing a trail to success, or on the … Read More → "A Sale of Thirty-Two Bitties"
The problem is programming.
If it were just a straight-up race to see what kind of chip delivers the most processing for the least power, FPGAs would have won long ago. A custom hardware version of just about any algorithm you can name, carefully optimized for FPGA LUT fabric, will run much faster, with less latency and far less power, than anything you can do with any conventional processor.
But what about GPUs?
Yes, that includes GPUs – especially the power part. And these days, it’ … Read More → "FPGAs Cool Off the Datacenter"
We humans are funny creatures. When it comes to how we organize ourselves, we like for someone to be in charge. But we don’t want them to be too much in charge. Exactly how that balance is set is a point of constant friction around the world, and there’s no one right setpoint for everyone or every culture.
System design inherits this ambivalence. We don’t want chaos, but we want maximal individual freedom and flexibility. So we want standards, but not too many. And we like reference designs, but we want to be able … Read More → "Managing Encryption"
Pop quiz: When is an operating system not an operating system?
Answer: When it’s your own code, acting as if it were an operating system. Sound interesting? Or just confusing? Read on, Dear Programmer.
We’re all familiar with standard embedded operating systems such as Linux, Android, LynxOS, ThreadX, uCOS, and so forth. They’re all great products, and they all have hundreds of loyal and happy users. That’s splendid.
But regardless of your particular OS allegiance, you have to admit that you are limited to a small number of choices. … Read More → "Build Your Own RTOS in 30 Minutes"
On April 19, 1965, Electronics magazine ran an article called “Cramming More Components Onto Integrated Circuits.” It was written by an engineer from Fairchild Semiconductor, and it contained a simple prediction that turned out to be the trend that changed the world. Gordon Moore’s article is the reference point for the explosive growth in semiconductor capability that has lasted for almost fifty years now.
In that same year, there was another article in that same magazine describing a device invented by Harvey Nathanson of Westinghouse Labs that combined a tungsten rod over a transistor … Read More → "No Moore for MEMS"
We, along with the rest of the lithography world, have been charting the progress of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) technology. There are a number of puzzle pieces required to enable that technology fully, but most eyes have been on the light source for patterning wafers: increasing source power has been a major requirement for achieving the kinds of throughput needed for high-volume manufacturing.
In fact, this concept of turning out large volumes of material is what separates science-project technology from production technology, so much … Read More → "EUV’s Second Source"
