In a surprise announcement at the company’s annual shareholder’s meeting, Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page admitted that “this whole Web thing is really kind of a scam. It’s just a way for us to sell ads.
“There’s no real content out there. It’s bogus. Google search isn’t ‘finding’ anything. It’s just a big honkin’ PHP script that generates content … Read More → "Internet Just a Big Hoax, Admits Google"
Looking for a cost-effective and efficient way to implement 4K and multi-channel video processing? As the world of video progresses to 4K and beyond, the need for higher performance and bandwidth makes system development more complex and expensive.
Watch this 18-minute webcast to see how Altera® device offerings and video framework can help you overcome these challenges. </ … Read More → "Scale Beyond 1080p with 4K Design Methodology"
Copper is a problem.
As individuals require increasing amounts of bandwidth, the challenges of the infamous “last mile” start to hit closer to home. With the delivery of HD video-on-demand presenting just the tip of the bandwidth iceberg, the problems of the last mile are rapidly becoming the problems of the last inch or the last few millimeters. When we crank up a SerDes connection of more than 10Gbps on our board today, we have to specially tune our transceivers depending on the specifics of that connection. If you set one up … Read More → "Moving Toward the Light"
Intent matters. Not as much as results, but it does matter. And it should drive results. These days, higher levels of design abstraction make it easier to express design intent rather than simply keeping it in your head (or in a document if you’re diligent) and implementing the intent directly. Behavior is an obvious example of logic intent, but that’s old news. Power is much more in vogue these days.
And we have a standard for that. No, wait, we have two standards, UPF … Read More → "Architectural Power Intent"
Most of us have grown up in a world where circuits are embedded in sand. But some of you more sensitive types may have been dismayed by what you learned when studying how these chips are made. They are laced with… impurities! Poisonous artificial ingredients like arsenic! If Mother Nature wanted us to poison ourselves and our circuits with arsenic, she’d have put it in the soil! These chips are in phones, and our children – our children!! – are putting these phones up to their delicate ears! What if the arsenic is leaching … Read More → "The World of Thin Films"
Digital signal processing (DSP) design starts have surpassed every other segment of the processing arena. Consequently, the demand for differentiated value in every aspect of DSP design has never been higher, increasing pressure on the teams tasked to build winning designs in record time. Xilinx conceived the Targeted Design Platform to address this challenge—the necessity to do more with less, to remove risk wherever possible, and to differentiate in order to excel.
Author: & … Read More → "Xilinx DSP Targeted Design Platforms Deliver Performance, Price, Power, and Productivity"
Most of us got into engineering because we like making things. There is a visceral satisfaction that comes from the process of creating a new thing that didn’t previously exist – and most engineers come pre-wired from the factory with a powerful subconscious drive to scratch that particular itch. Along with a love of making things, we are driven by the problem-solving process that inevitably follows. We want to think, make, observe, think, adjust, and make again. We can’t help it.
We didn’t just start this behavior on … Read More → "Making Things"
Do you really want what’s good for you?
As engineers, we’re trained to find the best solution to a set of problems. Granted, the definition of “best” can be a bit loose. Sometimes it’s the cheapest way to get the job done. Other times it’s the product you can conjure up the most quickly. And, on rare occasions, it’s actually the one with the best performance, lowest power consumption, and highest reliability. But whatever the parameters, we’re predisposed to find the optimal solution … Read More → "Between a Rock and a Soft Place"
Mechanics and electronics have historically lived far apart. To do the former, you go get a mechanical engineering degree, which has very little in common with the electrical engineering degree you need for electronics. The few areas of overlap are usually ones where one side must begrudgingly learn something from the other side for the sake of appearing well rounded. I personally was never happy about going to lab at 8 AM to watch pieces of metal fail.
Of course, the two must intersect in the real world. While much of technology used to be mechanical, we’ … Read More → "Fish and Fowl"
This video offers details of Xilinx support for the AXI-4 Common Interconnect and highlights the benefits of increased designer productivity, greater IP availability, and extended flexibility to achieve performance and system goals. Using the Xilinx Targeted Design Platforms to illustrate these benefits, Xilinx technical experts describe how support for the AXI-4 Common Interconnect is the cornerstone for the move to FPGA Plug-and-Play design.
… Read More → "FPGA Plug-and-Play Design with the AXI-4 Common Interconnect"
