Archives: Articles

April 29, 2019

They say that security can’t be designed as an afterthought. That security must be thought through as an early aspect of planning and architecture design. (“They” being… well, the same “they” that say lots of things.)

It would be so much easier if a small design house could have one security expert (at most) that everyone could run to with last-minute implementation requests. “Hey, we need PKI authentication. Can you quick add that in?” Or, “Hey, it turns out that, if we bury the same private key in every … Read More → "Automatic Security Policy Implementation"

Self-Driving Cars: What the Engineers Think

Survey Suggests That Developers Don’t Even Yet Know What They’re Facing

by Jim Turley

April 24, 2019

“Your car goes where your eyes go.” – Garth Stein

A brand-new survey of autonomous-vehicle designers tells an interesting story about their progress, their concerns, and their outlook for fully autonomous vehicles.

If I may offer a brief summary: they’re scared $#!%-less.

The survey was conducted by Forrester Consulting and paid for by microprocessor company ARM, so we can assume that ARM had a hand in designing … Read More → "Self-Driving Cars: What the Engineers Think"

Intel Acquires Omnitek

FPGA AI Race Heats Up

by Kevin Morris

April 23, 2019

Following on the recent announcement of the new Agilex FPGA family, Intel announced they are acquiring Omnitek – a developer of video and vision acceleration IP for FPGAs. As the market for FPGA-powered acceleration heats up, one of the killer applications is video and machine vision. FPGAs are extremely well suited to video analytics, as the combination of acceleration capabilities and flexible handling of high bit-rate data streams, plus the adaptability to various application-specific parameters is a near ideal fit.

Omnitek is a UK-based company with about 40 employees that has been … Read More → "Intel Acquires Omnitek"

A Self-Sufficient Serial Flash Memory

Adesto’s FusionHD Flash Unburdens the CPU

by Bryon Moyer

April 22, 2019

For IoT devices, it matters that the system be able to power itself down when not doing anything. So it matters that critical data remain in place when power is off – meaning that it needs non-volatile memory. Which, today, would be flash. And serial flash can be a good way to add such a memory with a modest footprint.

But, let’s face it: serial flash devices are entirely submissive: they do only what they’re told, and they do it only when they’re told to. Want to store … Read More → "A Self-Sufficient Serial Flash Memory"

Disruption in the 1920s

Hollywood Took a Big Hit Because of New Technology

by Jim Turley

April 17, 2019

“When I’m assembling a scene, I assemble it as a silent movie.” – Walter Murch

Hardly a week goes by that some “disruptive” new technology makes the news (you’re welcome) with promises to upend everything we know about computers, software, consumer electronics, security, healthcare, etc. Many of those promises peter out, never to be heard from again. But enough of them pan out that we become accustomed to living in an ever-changing world, where our assumptions about life and business continually evolve.

We tend to … Read More → "Disruption in the 1920s"

FlexLogix Accelerates Edge Inference

New InferX X1 Chips Show Promise

by Kevin Morris

April 16, 2019

Let’s start with one hard fact. There are a lot of companies developing new AI inference processors right now, and most of them won’t survive. We have heard reports that as many as 80 startups are currently funded to some level, and all of them are working hard on building better mousetraps, or at least building better specialized processors that could execute neural network models for identifying mice with minimal latency and power. Conventional processors are not very efficient at AI inference, which requires convolution operations with billions, or even trillions, of multiplications to occur … Read More → "FlexLogix Accelerates Edge Inference"

More Efficient Time-Sensitive Ethernet

Excelfore Provides a Traffic Shaper

by Bryon Moyer

April 15, 2019

Ah, Ethernet… our good, reliable, trusty friend from way back. So trusty, in fact, that our cars may soon be running a version of Ethernet for all of the electrification stuff. Leveraging something tried and true should certainly go without a hitch, right?

Well, certainly as compared to coming up with something entirely new, perhaps. But what’s this Ethernet going to do in our cars?

Well, for one, it will help with the infotainment stuff. Lots of data coming in through a wireless … Read More → "More Efficient Time-Sensitive Ethernet"

When Tubes were Better than Transistors

“Every Once in a While, a New Technology, an Old Problem, and a Big Idea Turn into an Innovation.” – Dean Kamen

by Steven Leibson

April 11, 2019

“I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.” – William Shakespeare

Way back in 1960, just after ICs were invented but before they became much of a force in the electronics market, the Electron Tube Information Council published a book titled “Tubes and Transistors: A Comparative Study.” This 66-page book was a nifty piece of competitive marketing that contrasted tube characteristics and transistor characteristics under the guise of objectivity … Read More → "When Tubes were Better than Transistors"

The Debug Time Machine

Undo Software Offers Take-No-Prisoners Approach to Squashing Bugs

by Jim Turley

April 10, 2019

“Is this going to be a stand-up fight, sir, or another bug hunt?” – PFC Hudson, Aliens

If you’re debugging code, which tool would you rather have: your favorite debugger or a time machine? A good debugger is vital, sure, but a time machine… You could rewind the clock to before the point you inserted the bug and then… just… not do that.

We may be a few years (millennia?) away from working time machines, but Undo … Read More → "The Debug Time Machine"

Inside Intel Agilex FPGAs

A New Day in the FPGA Race

by Kevin Morris

April 9, 2019

One of the most interesting announcements in Intel’s tidal wave of “Data-Centric” product and technology rollouts this month was the introduction of the company’s new “Agilex” FPGA families – formerly code-named “Falcon Mesa.” Agilex is the first new FPGA line developed by the former Altera group (now Intel PSG) since the Intel acquisition. Agilex is a milestone in the evolution of FPGA technology, and it brings substantial new capabilities to the party. It also represents a clearly divergent path from long-time archrival Xilinx, setting the stage for some interesting times ahead.

Read More → "Inside Intel Agilex FPGAs"

featured blogs

Off-Topic: Syllepsis and Zeugma

May 24, 2019

It's Memorial Day in the US on Monday, and Cadence is off. So today is the day before a holiday. By tradition, I write about...whatever I feel like. So let's go with figures of speech. Even... [[ Click on the title to access the full blog on the Cadence Community s...