Articles – Page 226

November 13, 2012

The two big FPGA companies want to be sure that you know they’re ahead.

They always have. It isn’t because you really needed to know, or because one or the other of them being ahead at any given time had any long-term industry-shaping ramifications. It’s just that this myopic, tit-for-tat, red vs blue, Hatfield and McCoy, be-the-first-to-blink behavior is, according to recent economic research, the optimal solution for members of a symmetric pre-emptive duopoly.

Read More → "The Future is Clear (ish)"

Thanks Four the Memories

by Bryon Moyer

November 12, 2012

This is a tale of two memories, and it is brought to you by the number 4.

These two memories don’t necessarily know each other, although they might reside near each other and might even have occasion to talk to each other. But, by and large, they have different stories to tell, which we will take in order.

OK, so perhaps this is two tales of two memories.

Once is never enough

The first is a deceptively simple-sounding tale. It is Kilopass’s reduction … Read More → "Thanks Four the Memories"

A-RM-D

AMD to Make ARM Chips; Brilliant or Desperate?

by Jim Turley

November 7, 2012

They say there’s a fine line between insanity and genius. And to be honest, I’m not sure which side I’m on.

Which side AMD is on, that is. (I already know what side I’m on.) Last week, Advanced Micro Devices dropped one of the biggest bombshells in its long and storied history: the company will start making 64-bit ARM processors, in addition to its usual x86 chips. It’s either a brilliant move or complete lunacy, and I’m not sure which it will turn out to be.

< … Read More →

The Path to Acceleration

Altera Bets on OpenCL

by Kevin Morris

November 6, 2012

Every hardware designer knows that a von Neumann machine (a traditional processor) is a model of computational inefficiency. The primary design goal of the architecture is flexibility, with performance and power efficiency compromised in as an afterthought. Every calculation requires fetching instructions and shuttling data back and forth between registers and memory in a sequential Rube-Goldbergian fashion. There is absolutely nothing efficient about it.

Dataflow machines (and their relatives), however, are the polar opposite. With data streaming directly into and through parallel computational elements – all pre-arranged according to the algorithm being performed – calculations … Read More → "The Path to Acceleration"

Going With the (Fluid) Flow

by Bryon Moyer

November 4, 2012

Quiz time. There’s a “high-tech” technology that has a very unusual asymmetry about it. In one application area, it ships enormous volumes to consumers and businesses alike. That’s pretty much its only high-volume play to date. Meanwhile, the vast bulk of development projects using this technology are in an area that has absolutely nothing to do with the high-volume space.

What is it? (No fair looking at the title for clues.)

It’s “microfluidics.” Since the study of fluids is a subset of mechanics, and, since there are typically electronic aspects to these … Read More → "Going With the (Fluid) Flow"

10 Ways to Effectively Debug your FPGA Design

by Amelia Dalton

November 2, 2012

Today’s FPGAs implement the equivalent of millions of ASIC gates and continue to grow in size and complexity. With the increasing amount of time designers are spending debugging and diagnosing the design, there is a need both for better ways to find errors early and en masse, and for smarter techniques to isolate errors and apply incremental fixes. The newest generation of the Synplify Premier synthesis tool addresses these needs by supporting early design checks and hierarchical design approaches.

… Read More →

Windows: 8 Users: 0

Windows 8, Windows RT, Surface, and End of Days

by Jim Turley

October 31, 2012

The worldwide rollout of Windows 8 has just happened, and I can’t stop thinking of an impolite word that begins with cluster—.

Like a lot of you nerds out there, I’ve been using Windows 8 on a spare PC for a little while now, and I must say… it’s going to fail, big time. It’s too different, too incompatible, and too confusing for the average PC user to want to have anything to do with it. With all the inevitability of Greek tragedy, we’ll watch the final spasmodic, reflexive twitching of the post-PC era. … Read More → "Windows: 8 Users: 0"

Tektronix Shakes Up Prototyping

Embedded Instrumentation Boosts Boards to Emulator Status

by Kevin Morris

October 30, 2012

FPGAs are clearly the go-to technology for prototyping large ASIC/SoC designs. Whether you’re custom-designing your own prototype, using an off-the-shelf prototyping board, or plunking down the really big bucks for a full-blown emulator, FPGAs are at the heart of the prototyping system. Their reprogrammability allows you to get hardware-speed performance out of your prototype orders of magnitude faster than simulation-based methods. If you’re trying to verify a complex SoC or write and debug software before the hardware is ready, there is really no option but an FPGA-based hardware prototype.

Dogboning the Dogbones

D2S Simulates for Mask Writing

by Bryon Moyer

October 29, 2012

A dozen or so years ago, chipmakers ran into an issue. Features on chips were getting too small to print, and fundamental changes in how they were being printed (ahem: EUV) were long delayed.

The problem is that you’re not supposed to be able to get good feature resolution for feature sizes too far below the wavelength of light used to expose the wafer. The smaller you go, the worse things get. And these days, we’re small.

The saving grace came in two forms. You might think of one as pre-distortion: if the … Read More → "Dogboning the Dogbones"

It Doesn’t Matter How Big Your Pen Is

N-Trig’s Touch-Interface Chip Comes In Tablet Form

by Jim Turley

October 24, 2012

Touch-screen interfaces are all the rage these days. In fact, they’re starting to look like a requirement. Certainly for consumer items like smartphones and tablets, a touch-sensitive interface is mandatory. And with the impending rollout of Windows 8 just days away, soon PCs and laptops will want touch interfaces as well. Point-of-sale terminals, retail kiosks, and industrial applications all want that special touch.

What most of these are missing, though, is the world’s oldest type of hands-on interface: the pen. Or, more accurately, the stylus. New-fangled tablets and smartphones pop up images of a QWERTY keyboard … Read More → "It Doesn’t Matter How Big Your Pen Is"