Bryon Moyer wrote about inscrutable patent language here, and, a few weeks earlier, Kevin Morris wrote about lawyers here. Both gentlemen are correct, of course, and they got me to thinking about patents.If you’re a habitué of these pages, you already know my opinion on patents. (And if you’re not, let me bend your ear … Read More → "Patent Language Serves Its Nefarious Purpose"
We’ve created a special domain for legal issues in this country. If it looks like a lawyer might have to get involved, the rest of us steer clear and know better than to try to make sense of things. Even if we understand the words, we might not understand what they mean when they’re used together in a paragraph or document. And, even if we do, it still might not make sense.
But we don’t seem to mind: whatever… leave it to the lawyers. As long as they& … Read More → "What “Is” Is"
A HW engineer and an embedded SW developer, who are slated to work together on a common project, strike up a conversation at the proverbial water cooler.
HW guy: “I just finished a month long evaluation for a new
co-verification tool. We finally made a decision on the product
and vendor we’re going with.”
SW guy (nonchalantly): “Really? I wouldn’t know much about evaluations, I build my … Read More → "(un)Rolling with the Times"
In August a group of experts on risk, safety engineering, and related matters looked at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station disaster to see what broader lessons could be learned. Before we start reviewing some of the broader topics that arose in the workshop, please look at the exam paper below.
Examination: Safety and Systems
Your exam starts now. Please answer all the questions in this paper in a way that will satisfy any party with any interest, legitimate or otherwise, and that, in ten years, twenty years or fifty years, will not … Read More → "Lessons from Fukushima"
We’ve done dozens of articles about how awesome FPGAs are for signal processing applications – with a measure of salt. We’ve pointed and laughed as FPGA vendors boasted of their gaggles of GMACs that nobody would ever realize with a practical DSP design. We raised an eyebrow when they told us how easy their DSP design flow for FPGAs was – heck, even a software guy could do it. Not. We even scrutinized (with suspicion) their high-level synthesis methodologies, and were typically less than flabbergasted at the complexity that sat right beneath the surface. </ … Read More → "Faster Floating-Point"
Assumptions are always dangerous, but there’s one reasonably safe assumption you can make about our IC-related topics: the underlying material is most likely silicon. Silicon is so dominant that anything else is considered fringe or boutique.
But if you keep your eyes open at technology conferences, the phrase “wide-bandgap materials” is becoming increasingly evident, with two compounds, GaN and SiC, dominating that discussion. These two substances tend to be treated separately and in isolation, whether in conference sessions or articles or papers. Which leaves unanswered the obvious big-picture questions: why two materials? Do … Read More → "Minding the Gap"
Software has become a major component of products that are produced by most technology companies and is rarely written from scratch. Resourceful software development organizations and developers use a combination of previously-created code, commercial software, open-source software, and their own creative content to produce the desired software product or functionality. Anytime a product containing software changes hands, there is a need to understand its composition, its pedigree, its ownership, and any third-party (including open-source software) licenses or obligations that govern its use by its new owners.
Avoiding Uncertainties in a Technology Transaction
Technology … Read More → "Anatomy of a Software Code Audit Process"
These are not the times for DIY or NIH if you can help it. More and more is expected of fewer and fewer people, so the less you have to do yourself, the better. Yes, some of us live with that lurking inner feeling that, even though there are lots of wheels out there that have stood the test of time, we could do a far better job inventing a better one ourselves. The existing wheels are just so, well, ordinary.
Alas, however; the schedule doesn’t allow for that. We must go rummage through the … Read More → "Not Much New Under the Sun"
“Their talents did not quite run to scholarship.”
This was Susanna Clarke’s polite way of describing a pack of idiots. Or more charitably, people who were perhaps in over their heads. Swimming out of their depth, one might say.
We’ve all encountered this type of person at work. Conveniently, they often wear neckties so that we can spot them from a long way off. But even credentialed engineers can wade in over their heads, meddling in technical areas where their aptitude does not entirely correlate with their ambition.
< … Read More → "When Programmers Rule the World"
