Articles – Page 27

A Brave New World of Emulation and Software Prototyping

March 28, 2024

Like so many of the technologies we take for granted today, I managed to find myself embroiled in the very early days of hardware emulation. This refers to the process of imitating the behavior of one piece of hardware (typically a silicon chip you are in the process of designing) with another piece of hardware (typically a special-purpose emulation system).

For the purposes of these discussions, I’m going to throw the term application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) around with gusto and abandon. However, everything I say in this column is … Read More → "A Brave New World of Emulation and Software Prototyping"

Intuitive Machines sticks its moon landing (mostly), with emergency help from two on-board FPGAs

by Steven Leibson

March 25, 2024

“The Moon is a Harsh Mistress,” a Hugo-award-winning SF novel published by Robert Heinlein in 1966, is an apt title that explains why so many actual moon missions fail. Landing on the Earth’s moon safely is hard. The first spacecraft to crash on the moon was the USSR’s Luna 2 spacecraft. It “impacted” the moon in 1959, followed by the first US spacecraft to impact the moon, Ranger 4 in 1962. The Soviet Union failed to soft-land a craft on the moon several times before Luna 9 stuck its landing in 1966. Surveyor 1 from the US landed successfully later that same … Read More → "Intuitive Machines sticks its moon landing (mostly), with emergency help from two on-board FPGAs"

Reimagining Radar in the Form of High-Resolution 4D Sensing Systems

by Max Maxfield

March 21, 2024

I know lots of engineers who could engineer me under the table, as it were. Hmmm, sometimes I read what I just wrote, and I think, “I wonder if anyone understands the meaning I’m attempting to impart,” like the “under the table” portion of the previous sentence, for example.

Well, fear not, because I am ever eager to waffle. Have you ever heard an expression along the lines of drinking someone under the table? The idea is that the person in question can hold their alcohol better than their … Read More → "Reimagining Radar in the Form of High-Resolution 4D Sensing Systems"

Is It Time for MRAM to Shine?

by Max Maxfield

March 19, 2024

I hail from a time when we could do naught but dream of computer memories with the capacity and performance of today’s offerings. On the bright side, I didn’t have to fight my way through using technologies like mercury delay lines. On the other hand, it wasn’t uncommon for the mainframe computers with which I came into contact to have a magnetic core store for main memory coupled with magnetic tape for long term storage.

I remember my first job after graduating university. I was a member of a team … Read More → "Is It Time for MRAM to Shine?"

HP Inc tries to brick my wife’s printer. CEO approves and calls people like me “bad customers” on CNBC.

by Steven Leibson

March 18, 2024

Last October, HP Inc issued an over-the-air firmware update to its printers that contained a Trojan Horse of the company’s own making. The update conned printer owners into accepting the update by saying that it was an anti-virus update. Instead, the update reconfigured the printers’ cartridge-reading routines so that they would brick the printer if they detected a non-HP ink cartridge. This Trojan slumbered silently in my wife’s OfficeJet Pro 6978 printer until early December when I inserted a black 902XL ink cartridge from 3^rd-party ink manufacturer LxTek. The … Read More → "HP Inc tries to brick my wife’s printer. CEO approves and calls people like me “bad customers” on CNBC."

Rambus’s RAMPART Will Rout Rowhammer

by Max Maxfield

March 14, 2024

I’ve just been introduced to a solution to a computer memory problem I didn’t even know existed. To be honest, I think I was happier not knowing there was a problem in the first place (“Ignorance is bliss,” as the ancient Latin writer, Publilius Syrus sagely suggested).

When I look back, I’ve had a long and involved relationship with computer memory. As just one example, I recall an incident sometime in the early 1980s when the small company I was working for decided to create a computer … Read More → "Rambus’s RAMPART Will Rout Rowhammer"

AMD announces I/O-heavy Spartan UltraScale+ FPGA subfamily for low-cost designs

by Steven Leibson

March 13, 2024

If you use low-cost – er – cost-effective FPGAs, there’s great news. You’ll have more choices sometime next year. AMD has just provided more details on its Spartan UltraScale+ FPGA family, based on TSMC’s 16nm FinFET process. These FPGAs will directly compete with Altera’s Agilex 3 FPGAs, when they appear. When it declared its independence from Intel on February 29, Altera reiterated a commitment to extend the Agilex FPGA architecture down from the mid-range Agilex 5 parts to a new FPGA subfamily called Agilex 3. Last September, when Intel PSG fist pre-announced its Agilex 3 plans, I wrote:

CEO Pat Gelsinger splits Intel’s baby into Intel Products and Intel Foundry

by Steven Leibson

March 11, 2024

Last month, Intel chucked a year’s worth of announcements into an event called “Intel Foundry Direct Connect.” Early in the event’s first two hours, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger announced the splitting of the company into Intel Products and Intel Foundry and introduced an advisory committee for Intel Foundry consisting of four high-powered luminaries:

Joe Kaeser, former CEO of Siemens AG
Chi-Foon Chan, former Co-CEO of Synopsys
Lip-Bu Tan, former CEO of Cadence Design Systems, chair of the Foundry Advisory Committee</ … Read More → "CEO Pat Gelsinger splits Intel’s baby into Intel Products and Intel Foundry"

Acoustic Detection of Drones

by Max Maxfield

March 7, 2024

I always perceived my dad to be a peaceful person, which isn’t to say he didn’t have his off days (which would involve someone else having a “bad hair day”) in his role in reconnaissance behind the German lines during WWII. I also don’t recall ever seeing dad angry. If it happened that my mother vexed him (I know, what are the odds?), the worst that would ensue is that he would clamp his teeth down on his pipe and refrain from saying anything. When I was older, dad once confided to me that he had bitten through three pipestems during his marriage to my mom. … Read More →

AMD’s x86 CPU and FPGA tango on Sapphire Technology’s Embedded+ PC motherboard

by Steven Leibson

March 6, 2024

What could possibly be interesting about a new PC motherboard? New x86 CPU? Yawn. Fancy new cooling fan with blue LEDs? Oh puh-leeze! Integrated FPGA for hardware I/O and computational acceleration with system-level software standardization and API calls? Tell me more. AMD has announced a new PC motherboard architecture for embedded PC applications, which it calls the Embedded+ integrated computing platform. From a hardware perspective, the Embedded+ platform architecture drops an FPGA onto a PC motherboard, connects the FPGA to the x86 CPU via PCIe, and routes the I/O pins from the FPGA to a … Read More → "AMD’s x86 CPU and FPGA tango on Sapphire Technology’s Embedded+ PC motherboard"