Articles – Page 205

December 4, 2013

As first-world problems go, losing your car keys is a bad one. Losing a whole warehouse full of shippable merchandise is probably worse, but warehouses typically have lots of people standing around watching over the goods. But what do you do when you’ve lost your car keys somewhere inside the warehouse? Needle, meet haystack. Not so easy now, huh? What are you going to do?

If you’ve planned ahead, you’d have little badges on your keys – badges stuffed with technology designed by DecaWave. The Dublin, Ireland startup has created an itty-bitty little chip it … Read More → "We Need Some Steenking Badges!"

Are FPGAs Dead?

Obsolescence Comes in Assorted Flavors

by Kevin Morris

December 3, 2013

I am an intense follower of technological trends.

But, I can’t tell you when the 8-track tape died – probably not even within a decade. I don’t know when the last dial telephone left our abode. I really have no idea when the points-and-condenser distributor went the way of the dodo, or during what year the final line of FORTRAN was punched into the last card. I couldn’t even make a good estimate of when the last non-novelty VCR was sold, or when the laserdisc finally went forever out of production.</ … Read More → "Are FPGAs Dead?"

Haptics: Once More, With Feeling

Engaging More Senses

by Bryon Moyer

December 2, 2013

I did a lot of typing in college. Even as an engineering student, I still had to take humanities courses, which meant writing papers. And, as cash was in short supply, I found that I could leverage this skill by typing papers for others.

I had an electric typewriter (no, I’m not that old) and the special keys for Spanish, French, and German, making me versatile. And so I got pretty good at blind touch-typing. In other words, I would simply look at the paper to be typed and proceed without glancing back at … Read More → "Haptics: Once More, With Feeling"

“Someone’s Got to be Summonsed”

Assigning Blame After Accidents

by Dick Selwood

November 28, 2013

In Britain a four-year-old boy was allowed to starve to death, and his body wasn’t found for two years. After his mother was sentenced to prison a few months ago, an inquiry was held into how the various local agencies and the police had dealt with the matter. I have no knowledge as to how competent the inquiry was, but when the report was published, it was violently attacked by the press and by government sources because no individual was blamed.

“So what has this to do with electronics?” I can hear you asking. Read More → "“Someone’s Got to be Summonsed”"

Cars, Coding, and Carelessness

Sloppy Coding Practices Led to a Fatal Crash

by Jim Turley

November 27, 2013

You’ve probably heard by now about the lawsuit against Toyota regarding its electronic engine control. The jury found the automaker guilty of writing fatally sloppy code, and, based on what the software forensics experts found, I’d have to agree.

This case is fundamentally different from the “unintended acceleration” fiasco that embroiled a certain German carmaker back in 1986. That scare was entirely bogus and made-up, and it was fueled by an ill-considered “60 Minutes” exposé that aired in the days when Americans watched only three TV channels. Sales of the affected cars plummeted, and it took more … Read More → "Cars, Coding, and Carelessness"

Altium Bends Over Backward

Plays to its Base with AD14

by Kevin Morris

November 26, 2013

The headline new feature for Altium’s newly released Altium Designer 14 (AD 14) is “Rigid-Flex Support.” True, rigid-flex is there, and it’s cool, but the headline might lead the casual reader to miss some very important changes that are happening at Altium. Altium has a new focus and a new mission these days. The Altium folks are going back to their roots, playing to their base, and trying to re-establish a strong partnership with the engineers the company was created to serve – the common, hard-working, in-the-trenches, everyday designers who are trying to create cool stuff but who … Read More → "Altium Bends Over Backward"

A Happier Muse

Can Cadence’s Voltus Make Us Less Pessimistic?

by Bryon Moyer

November 25, 2013

Many of the arts and skills developed throughout the ages have credited much of their inspiration to muses and patron saints and gods and spirits. These other-worldly beings provided both inspiration and guidance as the artisans built up a vast cultural legacy going back millennia.

So… if there’s a muse for engineering, who would it be? The thing about engineering is that free flights of fancy are often not permitted. We’re constrained by the possible, in stark contrast to experimental artists and even pure scientists. In fact, it’s worse than that: we have to … Read More → "A Happier Muse"

Smart Energy Getting Smarter

In the Short and Long Term

by Bryon Moyer

November 21, 2013

It’s time to take another look at the grid, yet another part of our world that is supposed to be getting smarter. And, for this update, there are two decidedly distinct aspects to address: the here-and-now – bits that can be used today, in particular for smart meters; and the yet-to-come – a look at some insights provided by Imec last month into their view of where things are going.

SoC me ASAP

The obvious main theme for what’s become available in the last few months has everything to do with SoCs and … Read More → "Smart Energy Getting Smarter"

Micro-Super-Computer-Chip

Microchip’s New PIC32MZ Puts Progress in Perspective

by Jim Turley

November 20, 2013

Sometimes the smallest things can knock you back on your heels and make you go, “Wow.”

Sure, we work in an industry of constant innovation. Computers get faster all the time, software gets more impressive, Internet startups come and go… we thrive on change and “destructive creation.” But still, you look around sometimes and wonder how we got here.

Not that long ago, the computer world was in the midst of a big RISC-versus-CISC battle. Would those newfangled RISC machines overturn our ideas of processor design and software’s role in computer architecture? Whole companies … Read More → "Micro-Super-Computer-Chip"

LTE To Go

MathWorks Simplifies the Standard

by Kevin Morris

November 19, 2013

The mobile world is undergoing a wonderful standards convergence. Instead of an alphabet soup of competing standards – GSM, CDMA, HSPA, HSDPA, OFDM, WiMax, EDGE, UMTS, and a host of alternatives and variants spreading their spectrum around the world and subdividing our engineering efforts into an unmanageably complicated array of special cases – we now have LTE (for “Long Term Evolution”) which has won favor both across a wide swath of the industry geographically and as a standard with some legs that may keep it around longer than two generations of smartphones.

Before there was … Read More → "LTE To Go"