Articles – Page 195

June 24, 2014

At the Gigaom Structure 2014 event last week, Intel’s Diane Bryant announced that Intel is “integrating [Intel’s] industry-leading Xeon processor with a coherent FPGA in a single package, socket compatible to [the] standard Xeon E5 processor offerings.” Bryant continues, saying that the FPGA will provide Intel customers “a programmable, high performance coherent acceleration capability to turbo-charge their algorithms” and that industry benchmarks indicate that FPGA-based accelerators can deliver >10x performance gains, with an Intel-claimed 2x additional performance, thanks to a low-latency coherent interface between the FPGA and the processor.

Surround-By-Cobalt

Applied Materials Introduces a New Metal

by Bryon Moyer

June 23, 2014

Metal has always been a bit messy. Even in the old days, when we laid metal lines over the rough terrain that resulted from various deposited layers and etch steps, step coverage was an issue when the metal didn’t conform well to those ups and downs.

Of course, what with the development of dual-damascene processes with chemical-mechanical polishing (CMP), we’ve eliminated all that topography, and metal has been smooth sailing ever since. More or less. (I know – tell that to the yield guy…)

But those days are coming to an end with the … Read More → "Surround-By-Cobalt"

Kaizen and the Art of Vehicle Maintenance

Remote Diagnostic Service Brings Auto Repair to the Cloud

by Jim Turley

June 18, 2014

How often has this happened to you? You’re sitting outside a Paris café, sipping aperitifs, when suddenly you find yourself wondering about your car’s tire pressures. Unfortunately, it’s still in the long-term lot at LAX, 5,600 miles away. Problème majeur! Not to worry; your companion whips out a smartphone, taps the screen a few times, et voila! – there is all the information, right at your absinthe-stained fingertips.

Whew, that was close.

While you’re at it, you decide to see how much gas is in the … Read More → "Kaizen and the Art of Vehicle Maintenance"

BFFs 4 FPGAs

Maxim Debuts PIXI Programmable Analog

by Kevin Morris

June 17, 2014

He raised his binoculars and scanned the surface of the water. The wind was gusting – causing irregular dark patches of waves to move mysteriously across the surface. Whitecaps broke here and there. “It was a day just like this when it appeared,” he recalls somberly. “It raised up right over there, and I watched it for a good twenty seconds as it moved left to right – like nuthin’ I ever saw in my life. Then, it dropped back outa’ sight and I ain’t seen it since.”

OK, maybe programmable analog isn’t quite as elusive as … Read More → "BFFs 4 FPGAs"

Who Gets Access?

Will the IoT Use the Desktop or Cellphone Model?

by Bryon Moyer

June 16, 2014

It’s like we have two separate brains, and only one of them can be on at a time.

In one brain, we deal with desktop and laptop computers. These are machines we use to do work. (Well, they used to be until content consumption via tablets looked tempting, and then all computers had to be that, making it harder to do actual work. But that’s a separate topic.)

The work we do on our own computers is considered to be our private business. We connect the computers to the internet in order to … Read More → "Who Gets Access?"

Testing Big-Ass Transistors

Mentor’s Power Tester Accelerates Diagnosis

by Kevin Morris

June 12, 2014

We talk a lot about transistors in these pages. But usually our discussions center around billions of microscopic transistors acting in concert. This article is not about those. Today, we are going to discuss transistors (and diodes and other components) about the size of your smartphone. These BATs (or “IGBTs” – Insulated-Gate Bipolar Transistors), as the industry seems to insist on calling them) are used in power electronics applications – like electric and hybrid cars, wind and solar power, and that amplifier the kid across the street is building in his basement (the one you’ll be able to … Read More → "Testing Big-Ass Transistors"

IoT = Internet of Tattletales

How Much Do You Want Your Creations To “Help” You?

by Jim Turley

June 11, 2014

All life on earth is insects. To a first-order approximation, there are no trees, no fish, no mammals, no birds, and no bacteria. If you round the fractions at all, everything living on this planet is some type of insect.

Stay with me on this. By analogy, all electronics are embedded systems. There are no supercomputers, no PCs, no Macs, no workstations. Everything with a microprocessor and some memory in it is an embedded system, usually a very small one that we don’t think much about. The average middle-class household has all sorts on embedded systems … Read More → "IoT = Internet of Tattletales"

Is the Classic Design Chain Broken?

Or Is It Just Another Step in Evolution?

by Dick Selwood

June 10, 2014

It used to be so simple. A group of chip designers would sit around drinking coffee and gently mulling things over when one would say, “You know what would be really cool? If we add a backward splurge feature to the K11 widget, it would allow users to do some awesome things.”

After a bit of engineering discussion, the sales team would go off and chat to a few friendly customers, come back and say, “They aren’t against it.” After this, management would buy into the project. When the device was launched, the marketing team would … Read More → "Is the Classic Design Chain Broken?"

Challenged By FinFETs

Ansys’s Latest Redhawk Has to Work Harder

by Bryon Moyer

June 9, 2014

There’s promise, and then there’s reality.

The promise of FinFETs has been one of higher performance with lower power than would have been possible if we had stayed on the same track as before and tried to keep scaling. This promise seems, more or less, to be realizable as companies start integrating these new devices into their aggressive-node designs.

The accompanying reality, in this case, has to do with all of the other details that you get along with the benefits. In other words, those benefits come at a price – and one of … Read More → "Challenged By FinFETs"

Synopsys Adds DSP Features to ARC Processors

New EM5D and EM7D Compete with Rival’s Cortex-M4

by Jim Turley

June 4, 2014

Always wanted an ARM Cortex-M4 processor but didn’t like the popular instruction set and massive software support? Well, friend, your ship may have just come in. Step right this way and shake hands with the ARC EM5D, the latest miniature CPU core from Synopsys. Now with more DSP!

ARC is the in-house CPU arm (hah!) of Synopsys, a company normally associated with EDA tools. The ARC processor is more popular than most people might think: the architecture has nearly 200 licensees (more than ARM and MIPS put together) and is on track to ship 1.5 billion units … Read More → "Synopsys Adds DSP Features to ARC Processors"