Articles – Page 210

September 11, 2013

AMD has begun to peel back the covers on its embedded processor roadmap, and it looks… okay. There are no major surprises or breakthroughs on the horizon, but the company does seem to have a plan for staying relevant to embedded engineers for at least a few more years.

The one thing AMD has going for it that no other processor vendor can claim is that it’s a “switch hitter,” producing both ARM-based and x86-based embedded processors. That looks to be a sound strategy going forward, given that ARM and x86 dominate the embedded market ( … Read More → "AMD: Appealing to Multiple Designers"

It Won’t Fit in a Box

System Engineering the User Experience

by Kevin Morris

September 10, 2013

A few weeks ago, my esteemed colleague Bryon Moyer wrote an article entitled “Just Who Is the Customer?” In this article, he identifies the “toll-taker” or “gatekeeper” as a sort of semi-villain who takes decision power away from the consumer for his own gain. Bryon makes a well-supported case, but I’d like to propose an alternative question and an alternative explanation:

Just What is the Product?

As electronic engineers, we design things like circuits, chips, … Read More → "It Won’t Fit in a Box"

Sensors Awaken an EDA Giant

Synopsys Announces a Sensor Subsystem

by Bryon Moyer

September 9, 2013

There’s a scramble afoot as sensor and silicon and software and system folks try to jockey over the best way to implement and integrate sensors into a broad range of devices. You’ve got:

Folks making sensors
Folks making micro-controllers that can run sensor-related software
Folks integrating sensors and micro-controllers together
Folks integrating multiple sensors together in a single package, possibly with a micro-controller as well
System guys controlling sensors via the AP in an SoC
System guys including a Read More → "Sensors Awaken an EDA Giant"

New Non-Volatile Memory for a New Era

Crossbar Announces their RRAMs

by Bryon Moyer

September 5, 2013

Once upon a time

Let’s take ourselves back a few centuries, to a time when technology is rather more rough and ready. We still have silicon to work with, but no semiconductor fabs. And yet, being the aggressive can-do species that we are, we decide we want to build a large-scale non-volatile memory.

“Why,” you ask. Well, why do anything? Why build a pyramid? Why build a sphinx? Do we need a reason? We do? Ah… to make the ancient Egyptian VCs happy… Got it. OK: Perhaps to record the scores of … Read More → "New Non-Volatile Memory for a New Era"

Digging In the Irony Mine

Everyone Does Dumb Stuff; Some Profit From It

by Jim Turley

September 4, 2013

My neighbor’s car was parked by the curb with the engine running. Which was odd, because he wasn’t inside it. Here was his empty car, parked and locked, but idling. Five minutes go by. Ten minutes. Almost half an hour passes, and I’m beginning to wonder if he even remembers it’s out here.

Fortunately, he popped out of his front door a short time later, so I called over to him, “Hey, you left your engine running!”

“It’s okay,” he replied. “I’m charging my iPhone.”

Uh… what?</ … Read More → "Digging In the Irony Mine"

Going Global

Zuken Expands Scope and Reach

by Kevin Morris

September 3, 2013

Most of us have heard of Zuken. They have always been one of the quiet companies who made PCB layout software – and who was not Mentor or Cadence. If we decided to upgrade our board design capabilities, they were on the list of suppliers we’d consider. Nothing about Zuken particularly grabbed our attention other than the assumption that they could help us bring some order to blank FR4 just as well as the next guy.

In Japan, however, Zuken was certainly not just one of the pack. In Japan, Zuken has had … Read More → "Going Global"

Formal: It’s Still Hard

Oski Discusses End-to-End Block Verification

by Bryon Moyer

September 2, 2013

Formal verification has had a rough go over the years. It came onto the scene with tons of promise, and that promise remains, to some extent, promise. It’s hard to argue against the possibility of taking a spec and a circuit, pushing a button, and watching while some tool provides proof that the circuit is correct.

And watching… and watching… and, well, yeah, that’s where the problems cropped up. Waiting for an answer to some of these problems, if not done carefully, can require suspended animation so that you can be reawakened in some future … Read More → "Formal: It’s Still Hard"

Detect-Review-Classify

Wafer Inspection Systems Get an Upgrade

by Bryon Moyer

August 29, 2013

There’s nothing quite like a day at the beach. People go for a variety of reasons: get a tan, take a swim (well, on the East Coast more than the West Coast north of SoCal… unless you look good in a wetsuit), watch whales, feel and smell the salt air… And, for some people, it’s an opportunity to mine for hidden treasure.

You’ve seen these guys. Typically well-covered, daring the sun to penetrate their layers of protection. Oblivious to others because their eyes are focused on a dial and their ears are covered by … Read More → "Detect-Review-Classify"

Bright Copper Kettles and Warm Woolen Mittens

More Favorite Things About Embedded x86 Programming

by Jim Turley

August 28, 2013

I’m atoning for my sins.

Following my beat-down on Microsoft, which was gratifyingly therapeutic, I’m making up for it by being nice to Intel and AMD, long-time associates of the Great Beast of Redmond.

A lot of embedded programmers shun x86 chips because they equate them with Windows. “Windows and x86” are like Facebook and Zuckerberg, Ferrari and Italy, Wall Street and corruption. They just go together. But they don’t have to. It should be obvious, but x86 chips don’t always run Windows, or any other mainstream desktop operating system. There … Read More → "Bright Copper Kettles and Warm Woolen Mittens"

Big Board Blowout

The State of the Prototyping Game

by Kevin Morris

August 27, 2013

As FPGAs have gotten larger and larger, the target audience for the biggest, baddest devices has grown smaller and smaller. These days, the audience has pretty much dwindled to a single group – those using FPGAs to prototype even larger systems. Engineering teams designing the biggest, most complicated SoCs need as many gates worth of prototyping as they can get – and the people developing software for those systems need to start well before the actual hardware is working.

The FPGAs for this type of work come almost exclusively from Xilinx and Altera. On the … Read More → "Big Board Blowout"