Articles – Page 231

August 7, 2012

“What are you thinking about, honey?”

His mind raced for an appropriate answer.

“You look like you’re somewhere far away,” she continued.

He avoided the probing gaze of his wife – her trusting eyes seemingly steering right through his own, turning right, and studying the left hemisphere of his brain looking for answers. He had promised to always be faithful to her – to tell her the truth no matter what – to be honest and open with her for the rest of his life. It was an important and meaningful oath to him. He … Read More → "Dealing with Duality"

Learn to Design at MachXO2 Speed!

by Bryon Moyer

August 7, 2012

The MachXO2 family of programmable logic devices is optimized for low density applications, with an unprecedented mix of low cost, low power and high system integration. Now, with 10 new reference and demo designs, you can complete your design faster than ever.

MachXO2 Design Seminars

Attend a free seminar to learn about the new reference and demo designs for the Embedded Function Block, including hardened I2C and SPI interfaces and … Read More → "Learn to Design at MachXO2 Speed!"

Attack on Many Fronts

The Analog World is Awash in New Tools

by Bryon Moyer

August 6, 2012

The name “Silicon Valley” is, to some extent, a reminder of a glory age, when the perfect confluence of innovative minds and a couple of world-class universities all within spitting distance fell together into a cauldron of innovation.

Innovation still happens here, of course. And many original sparks of brilliance still flash here. But much of the work that supports the elaboration and implementation of those sparks – not to mention outright manufacturing of the goods themselves – has long gone someplace where engineers don’t expect to make six figures. Ever. It’s as if the Valley overheated … Read More → "Attack on Many Fronts"

Software Thermal Management with TI OMAP Processors

by Kevin Morris

August 2, 2012

TI OMAP applications processors are powerful and flexible; this makes them well suited for navigating difficult power and thermal constraints. However, the complexity of OMAP parts is high and the ways in which to use them are varied and intricate. This article focuses specifically on ways to improve thermal performance in TI OMAP parts that limit the source of heat in integrated circuits: power.

Before getting into specifics about how to manage thermal problems with OMAP, let’s remember that to manage thermal issues, there are three approaches we can take:

Don’t … Read More → "Software Thermal Management with TI OMAP Processors"

Pick a Cell

by Dick Selwood

August 1, 2012

Just over a year ago I reported on femtocells, (From Little Cells Do Mighty Networks Grow?). In the article I explained that femtocells were low-power base stations for cellular phones, using the internet, through ADSL or cable, as the backhaul – connecting the phone user to the main cellular network. Femtocells are designed to take the load off the base stations, particularly for serious downloading, and to fill in gaps in coverage. Much of what was written was gathered at the 2011 Femtocells World Summit in London.</ … Read More → "Pick a Cell"

When The Bottom Drops Out

Rising With Moore’s Law Leaves a Hole

by Kevin Morris

July 31, 2012

It’s always exciting at the cutting edge. Here at EE Journal, we are always having fun learning about and bringing you news about the latest, greatest, biggest, fastest, coolest, most exotic accomplishments of our global engineering community. We love to surf the crest of Moore’s Law and gasp in amazement at the millions-> billions-> trillions-> of gates, LUTs, transistors, hertz, FLOPs, cycles, bytes, pins, users, dollars, and every other amazing metric that this dynamic industry seems to constantly generate.

With the Moore-driven juggernaut plowing exponentially through technologically tumultuous seas, it’s easy … Read More → "When The Bottom Drops Out"

Images and Gestures

CEVA and eyeSight Target Consumer Cameras

by Bryon Moyer

July 30, 2012

Ambitious ideas about the blossoming sensor opportunities boil down to two things:

Gather data. Lots of data.
Make sense out of that data, which means computing. Lots of computing.

Of course, how you do that depends on the application and the platform. We’ve looked at sensor fusion and the fact that some software is provided for free by the sensor makers as part of the cost of making a sensor. But higher-level (as well as low-level) software is provided by sensor-agnostic companies like Read More → "Images and Gestures"

Tackling the Hard Part

Vector Fabrics’ Pareon Takes On Partitioning

by Bryon Moyer

July 25, 2012

As multicore works its way into the embedded world, there are lots of things that used to be simple that become more complex, both in hardware and in software. But one element – often acknowledged by people knowledgeable in this space as “the hard part of multicore” – has remained mostly untouched: how to take a program and partition it over multiple cores.

Basically, it’s hard to do wrong. And it’s much harder to do right. Particularly when doing it manually, which was the only option for a long time. Automating elements of the process helps, and … Read More → "Tackling the Hard Part"

Towards Silicon Convergence

Altera’s CTO Weighs In on the Future

by Kevin Morris

July 24, 2012

We have often discussed the many ramifications of Moore’s Law in these pages. Of course, chips continue to get exponentially cheaper, faster, more capable, and more efficient. Also of course, the fixed costs of making a new chip continue to get exponentially higher. If one combines these two trends, one sees that we must be increasingly careful on what chips we choose to make. Any company setting out to design a new chunk of leading-node silicon these days must be quite certain that they are building something that either works in a wide range of diverse applications or … Read More → "Towards Silicon Convergence"

Achieving Exa-Scale

Intel’s Shekhar Borkar Breaks It Down

by Bryon Moyer

July 23, 2012

Computers use a lot of power. Big, fast computers use a ton of power. And rooms full of big, fast computers use… well… lots of tons of power.

At Semicon West, keynote speaker Shekhar Borkar, from Intel, envisaged an age of “exa-scale” computing – meaning computing at the rate of one quintillion floating-point operations per second. For reference, today, tera-scale is accessible; peta-scale (1000 times faster) has been achieved, but is out there; and exa-scale is 1000 times that.

The biggest hurdle between here and there should be no surprise: power. An exa-scale computer would need its own … Read More → "Achieving Exa-Scale"