Articles – Page 209

September 25, 2013

What do Netflix movies, embedded programmers, and Raymond Chandler mysteries all have in common?

More on that later. For now, let’s look at a new debugging tool available to ARM users (and they are legion) that helps to find and swat bugs. Just this week, ARM announced that its premium Designer Studio v5 (DS-5) software suite will include a new feature designed by Undo Software. It’s a pretty sweet tool, and one that seems to have a good track record of uncovering hard-to-find bugs and saving programmers time.

Called “application rewind,” it’s … Read More → "Bug-B-Gone!"

The FPGA is Half Full

Unwinding the Marketing Spin

by Kevin Morris

September 24, 2013

Let’s say you are looking for a new house for your family. You’ve got a couple of contenders. One has four bedrooms, three baths, a two-car garage, and 3,000 square feet of living area. The other has three bedrooms, three baths, a three-car garage, and 3,200 square feet of living area.

Lining the two data sheets up, the houses are comparable. One shows a bit more living area, the other has an additional bedroom (which you would just use for a guest room anyway), and the additional garage isn’t much of a … Read More → "The FPGA is Half Full"

A New Variable Capacitor

Cavendish Kinetics Targets Antenna Frequency Tuning

by Bryon Moyer

September 23, 2013

It’s like coming back to a place you used to know and finding that everything has changed.

A few years ago, when MEMS was just a(n) FLA to me, I decided to try to figure out a bit more of what it was about. Someone I was working with at the time used to be associated with a MEMS company – one working on monolithic CMOS/MEMS – and so that was what I studied first.

I didn’t do anything with that specific story at the time, but now, a few years later, I’ … Read More → "A New Variable Capacitor"

What Are You Buying?

Watch Out For More Than Just the Small Print

by Dick Selwood

September 19, 2013

It looks so beguiling – on-line access to your favourite software so you never have to worry about updates, patches, new releases, whatever. The consumer companies are all going for it – Microsoft, Adobe and others. But it leaves me with a sinking feeling. Why?

Obviously I realised years ago that I never owned the software that I bought, for real money, on a deck of 5.25” floppy disks – I merely had a license to use it. And that license could be subject to various serious limitations.

As an anecdotal aside, I was told of a team that … Read More → "What Are You Buying?"

Spansion Jumps On the ARM Bandwagon

New ARM-based MCUs to Complement Fujitsu Products

by Jim Turley

September 18, 2013

Back in May, we told you that Spansion had acquired all the microcontroller and analog assets from Fujitsu, marking the Japanese company’s exit from the MCU business and Spansion’s introduction. This week, the other shoe drops. Spansion has licensed the ARM architecture as well, signaling its intention to enter the wild and wooly business of designing, making, and selling ARM-based MCUs.

The ARM entrée gives Spansion a two-pronged approach to embedded MCUs, albeit one a bit less dramatic than < … Read More → "Spansion Jumps On the ARM Bandwagon"

Power Puzzle

FPGA Power Doesn't Work Like You Think

by Kevin Morris

September 17, 2013

We all learned about power in EE101, right? You know, voltage times current – bam, we’re done. Easy as Ohm’s Law. Of course that was just for DC, and we had to learn how to do all that RMS stuff for signals that wiggle. Still, we left engineering school having a pretty good feeling that we had this whole power thing under control.

Fast forward a few years and we’re in industry, designing digital circuits. We learn that we can make some broad assumptions about power, and those hold true for … Read More → "Power Puzzle"

SuVolta Hits Production

ARM, Fujitsu, and UMC Add Their Voices

by Bryon Moyer

September 16, 2013

We noted recently the slight hesitation taking place in the rush to FinFETs. Some folks are taking another look at FD-SOI as a way of extending planar technology in a more cost-effective manner than what FinFETs promise.

But there’s more to planar than just FD-SOI. Some time back we also surveyed a new approach to planar transistors being pioneered by newcomer SuVolta. At the time, our focus was … Read More → "SuVolta Hits Production"

Modern Launch

Executing a 21st Century Technology Launch

by Bryon Moyer

September 16, 2013

There are certain things that we all do without questioning. Ways and means have evolved on how to do them, and so we do them that way because, well, that’s how they’re done. But times change, and sometimes it’s useful to go back and see if the old ways are still the best ways.

Technology launches tend to follow a prescribed pattern. There are certain materials that need to be created, and they have to follow a prescribed formula. But these ways of doing a product launch originated a long time ago, when print … Read More → "Modern Launch"

A Quixotic Search for Answers

by Nanette

September 16, 2013

A seemingly innocuous-looking news release about a new product sent this writer on a months-long quest for truth, justice and the technology way, as Superman might say.

I’m getting ahead of myself and long-time readers of EE Journal might wonder what possible relevance this story will have to their work lives. Well, maybe nothing and, in that case, check in tomorrow for a more relevant article. But, the lowly product news release is often the way an EDA, semiconductor or embedded company gets the attention of your favorite writers at EE Journal or … Read More → "A Quixotic Search for Answers"

Think Outside Your Technology

Which is Where Your Users Are

by Bryon Moyer

September 12, 2013

Sometime during the last twelve months at one of the typical industry conferences, I took a typical briefing. To us in the journalism world, a “briefing” is when a company sits down with an editor like me and tells a story. Their hope is that we will retell that story. Because if the story comes from their pen, it sounds like marketing; if it comes from our pen, it sounds like journalism, which gives it an extra air of legitimacy.

Of course, if you’re like me or my EE Journal colleagues, you probably take their story, … Read More → "Think Outside Your Technology"