Articles – Page 225

December 3, 2012

They were late to the party, but they seem to be deciding the menu.

Phones and tablets have accelerated the use of sensors dramatically, pioneered by Apple and Google. Windows 8 has just been released, and yet suddenly Microsoft seems to be calling the shots when it comes to sensor integration in consumer devices and computers.

Why? Well, they are a pretty big elephant, and, even if some might perceive that to make them slow and lumbering (or – gasp! – moving towards irrelevance), they … Read More → "Sensors in Windows"

Letting Process Drive MEMS Design

by Bryon Moyer

November 29, 2012

MEMS is 20 years behind ICs.

So says MEMS consultant Alissa Fitzgerald of AMFitzgerald. A lot can happen in 20 years – and it could well be argued that MEMS doesn’t have 20 years to catch up. If it has a choice. And if it can even catch up completely.

The issue is the “one device, one process” component of Yole’s MEMS Law. This is something you would never see with ICs, especially in today’s fabless/foundry world. With ICs, the foundry has a process, it works a particular way, it has been thoroughly characterized twelve … Read More → "Letting Process Drive MEMS Design"

Go Big or Go Home

ARM’s new Cortex-A53 and -A57 Redefine the Company’s High End

by Jim Turley

November 28, 2012

Citius, altius, fortius. That’s Latin, y’all, for “faster, higher, stronger.” The mathletes among you may also recognize it as the motto of the modern Olympic Games, urging the world’s elite competitors to give their all for the benefit of broadcast networks and sponsors—uh, for the simple joy of athletic achievement. Whatever; it translates into business-speak as, “up and to the right.”

Cue the “Chariots of Fire” music and slo-mo beach workouts with sweaty men in their underwear. Our industry’s best-known British competitor has essentially run its first four-minute mile, breaking … Read More → "Go Big or Go Home"

Staying Ahead of the Curve

Synopsys Upgrades HAPS

by Kevin Morris

November 27, 2012

Verification and test have always faced a tricky paradox: How do you build equipment to test and verify the biggest, fastest devices ever created?

After all, it stands to reason that the tester has to be faster than the thing it’s testing, and the prototype has to be bigger than the thing it’s prototyping. It means that those folks have to always be running ahead of the fastest runners in order to handle the problem.

When prototyping large SoC designs, this issue has always been handled by … Read More → "Staying Ahead of the Curve"

Taming IP Test Interconnect

by Bryon Moyer

November 26, 2012

The military has dealt with this for years. And first responders ran headlong into the issue with 9/11.

You have a localized entity – a police department, a platoon, Red Cross folks on the front line – and it has its way of communicating internally. But when it has to work with another group – the fire department or the police from another town or perhaps a platoon from a different branch of the service – then suddenly they have to figure out how to patch all of these things that work fine on their own into a cohesive whole, getting messages … Read More → "Taming IP Test Interconnect"

With a Wave of My Hand

Microchip’s Gesture-Interface Chip Avoids Unsightly Screen Smudges

by Jim Turley

November 21, 2012

Touch-screen interfaces are so last week. If you really want to impress your friends, your boss, or your fellow engineers, what you really want is a gesture-based interface. Gesture is like touch, but cooler. You never actually touch the screen (or anything else). Instead, you wave your hands in front of it and the system just knows what you want. It’s the embodiment of Arthur C. Clarke’s axiom, “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

And how much will it cost you, Dear Reader, to add this magic to your … Read More → "With a Wave of My Hand"

So Long and Thanks For All The Glue Logic

by Dick Selwood

November 19, 2012

25 years ago FPGAs were the latest and greatest new thing. They were, by replacing glue logic, going to speed up the design of systems, simplify Bills of Material and generally make life easier. Actel ran an ad with the headline “Idea at Breakfast – In Production by Dinner.” Over time, FPGAs have got bigger, faster, and more complex to design. And while they have not replaced ASICs and SoCs, something their advocates were predicting a few years ago, the numbers of ASIC and SoC design starts is certainly not growing at anywhere near the rate of FPGA design starts. Design … Read More → "So Long and Thanks For All The Glue Logic"

Tackling MEMS Measurement Inaccuracies

by Bryon Moyer

November 18, 2012

It’s said that the best way to learn something really well is to teach it to someone else. A close corollary to that would be simply to write about it. Which we in the press have to do all the time. So what happens when we don’t quite understand what we’re writing about?

Oh, wait, I’m not sure if I was supposed to say that. You know, inner circle of writers, never admit we know less than we do, etc. Well, I’ve said it; the damage is done. If you never hear … Read More → "Tackling MEMS Measurement Inaccuracies"

Does “Open” Foster Innovation?

by Bryon Moyer

November 15, 2012

TSMC held their Open Innovation Platform (OIP) event not long ago. One of the keynote speakers was ARM’s Simon Segars, and he spoke about the benefits of openness, starting with the contrast between how closed the PC market is and how open the phone market has been.

Whoa, whoa, whoa… let’s play that one back, more slowly.

He showed a picture of a standard desktop PC box as an example of an extremely closed system and then a slide with all of the … Read More → "Does “Open” Foster Innovation?"

Imagine There’s No MIPS

MIPS Technologies Acquired by Imagination Technologies

by Jim Turley

November 14, 2012

It’s the circle of life. The great wheel of existence. One door closes; another opens. The end of a chapter, the beginning of another. Pick your favorite metaphor—MIPS Technologies has been packed up and sold.

That’s actually pretty good news for MIPS’s 160-some employees, but it still feels like the end of an era to me. One of the darlings of the RISC computer era, and an innovator in computers, microprocessors, and business models, is now just a division within the larger company of Imagination Technologies.

For what it’s worth, … Read More → "Imagine There’s No MIPS"