Articles – Page 30

Adventures with SiTime’s MEMS-based Super-TCXOs – Super Accurate Clocks for the Future – Part 1

January 17, 2024

Clocks are integral to most electronic systems. Timing and communications systems need extremely accurate clocks. When I started working with electronics, in the heyday of Citizen’s Band (CB) radio, quartz crystals were on sale everywhere, even at Radio Shack. The CB crystals congregated around 27 and 28 MHz, but many more frequencies were on offer. As I started designing circuits as an engineer, I used many specific crystal frequencies: 32.768 kHz for real-time clock circuits, 3.57954 MHz for the TV color burst, 1.8432 MHz for the Motorola MC14411 bit-rate generator, 4.9152 MHz for the bit-rate generator in the Signetics 2661 enhanced communications chip, … Read More → "Adventures with SiTime’s MEMS-based Super-TCXOs – Super Accurate Clocks for the Future – Part 1"

Addressing The Memory Guy’s CXL Conundrums

by Steven Leibson

January 15, 2024

My friend Jim Handy (The Memory Guy) recently published a blog about Compute Express Link (CXL) and two conundrums he perceives about the technology. CXL is a relatively new cache-coherent memory protocol based on open standards that’s designed to make large memory pools available to multiple processors in large computer systems and data centers. CXL’s central objective, in my opinion, is to help data center architects avoid overprovisioning every CPU in a multiprocessor … Read More → "Addressing The Memory Guy’s CXL Conundrums"

Is MIPS Poised to Take the RISC-V World by Storm?

by Max Maxfield

January 11, 2024

Sometimes the world can be a funny old place. Take computer companies, for example. Some (like IBM) seem to have been around forever and they also seem destined to stay around forever. Others flicker in and out of existence so quickly that most folks are never even aware they existed in the first place. Still others pop up and down as if they were engaged in a deranged game of corporate Whac-A-Mole. … Read More →

Within Five Years, All New Cars Will Be Able to See at Night!

by Max Maxfield

January 9, 2024

A few evenings ago as I pen these words, my wife (Gina the Gorgeous), your humble narrator (I pride myself on my humility), and a number of other people were visiting at a friend’s house. There were about 20 of us. Only non-alcoholic drinks were consumed. It was dark when we all decided to head for home. Some were walking. I was driving. At least one of the people on foot almost failed to complete their journey.

Some of the folks set off perambulating down the road while the rest of us milled … Read More → "Within Five Years, All New Cars Will Be Able to See at Night!"

The Case of One Dead Digital Multimeter

by Steven Leibson

January 8, 2024

There’s no more fundamental piece of test gear for electrical engineers than a multimeter. I own a bunch, starting with my Micronta 22-150 analog multimeter with a mirrored scale, which I bought from Radio Shack in my high school days back in the 1970s. Miraculously, that meter still works. I’ve got at least five Cen-Tech 3½-digit Digital Multimeters that Harbor Freight used to give away for free with a coupon. (That’s about what they’re worth.) These meters are slow and have relatively low resolution, but they’re fine for monitoring multiple power supply … Read More → "The Case of One Dead Digital Multimeter"

Photo-Realistic Renderings for Next-Gen Engineering Applications

by Max Maxfield

January 4, 2024

I was just introduced to the HOOPS Luminate SDK from the folks at Tech Soft 3D, which caused a cascade of cogitations to commence careening around my poor old noggin…

I’m not a big player of computer games, if the truth be told, but I do … Read More → "Photo-Realistic Renderings for Next-Gen Engineering Applications"

Don Lancaster: The Electronics Industry Lost Another Pioneer Last Year

by Steven Leibson

January 3, 2024

The industry lost yet another pioneer last year, and his passing seems to have been largely unheralded. Don Lancaster was a prolific writer whose books and articles going back to the 1960s taught generations of electronics hobbyists and budding engineers how to use analog and digital integrated circuits, how to program early 8-bit microprocessors – particularly the MOS Technology 6502, how to use Adobe’s PosScript page description language as a programming language like a virtuoso, and how to become a technology entrepreneur. Lancaster published more than 1800 technical articles in various magazines and some 35 technical books. He was a … Read More → "Don Lancaster: The Electronics Industry Lost Another Pioneer Last Year"

Want to Create Silicon Chips? Want Them Fast? Want them Cheap?

by Max Maxfield

December 28, 2023

I’m currently contemplating an unusual annual technical conference. This affair is invitation only. Attendance is limited to 100 people give-or-take. In addition to the leading computer chip architects from companies like Intel and AMD, it’s also common to rub shoulders with pioneers of technology spanning everything from computing to electric vehicles to deep space exploration. This conference, whose name I may not speak, is held at a facility in a location I may not reveal, but I fear I’ve said too much.

I’m sure you’ve heard … Read More → "Want to Create Silicon Chips? Want Them Fast? Want them Cheap?"

How Will We Feed 8 Billion People? With AI’s Help, of Course

by Steven Leibson

December 27, 2023

The Earth now needs to feed 8 billion people… every single day. The only way to meet this almost unimaginable demand for food is to continuously improve the effectiveness, efficiency, and cost basis of growing and delivering that food. That is the agriculture industry’s biggest challenge in the 21st century. Increasingly, agriculture is relying on artificial intelligence (AI) to deliver those gains.

John Deere is one of the leaders in applying AI to agriculture. The company has been supplying farmers with a hands-free driving option for its tractors for 20 years. Building on that … Read More → "How Will We Feed 8 Billion People? With AI’s Help, of Course"

AI-Based Cybersecurity for Next-Generation Data Center Servers

by Max Maxfield

December 26, 2023

Sometimes I envy the creators of early, unconnected computers. They could happily spend their days working on the fun stuff—both hardware and software—without worrying about bad actors, nefarious fellows, and naughty nation states trying to break in and steal their data or, worse, encrypting said data and then ransoming it.

These days, I pity the folks in charge of data centers involving tens of thousands of servers connected to each other and to the outside world. Take a moment to think about your own data. If ransomware somehow infiltrated its way … Read More → "AI-Based Cybersecurity for Next-Generation Data Center Servers"