Articles – Page 502

July 14, 2009

Aldec is offering a full-blown, mixed-language HDL simulator for $1995.

It might seem strange to have a feature article about a price reduction. After all, we don’t usually see a story come across the AP newswire with a headline like “Heirloom Tomatoes on Sale for $2.99/lb.” The price of commodity items is well understood to be the product of a magic brew that includes supply, demand, manufacturing and shipping costs, package design, and a host of other intangibles – hardly newsworthy.

So, why is this interesting?

There are two reasons.

< … Read More →

That’s with a “B”

EVE Crosses a New Emulator Threshold

by Bryon Moyer

July 14, 2009

From the day we are old enough to articulate polysyllabisms, we are fascinated with big numbers. The concept of “big,” of course, being relative. Some older cultures are thought to have had three quantifiers: one, two, and many. Which is suggested in the resemblance between the French words for “three” (trois) and “very” (très). (Here you have to think the real old Europe.)

But we’ve moved beyond that. Way beyond that. Why, in my day, a million dollars was a lot of money. Being a millionaire meant … Read More → "That’s with a “B”"

So You Want to Be an Entrepreneur

Part 3

by Jim Turley

July 14, 2009

Entrepreneurship and innovation are all about zigging while everyone else zags. You’ve got your engineering skills down, but what about that dreaded word, marketing? In a world where Pet Rocks sell by the millions, and where buggy and expensive operating systems outsell small, inexpensive, and reliable ones, marketing clearly plays a big role. There’s no need to sell your soul – just know how to sell your product.

In this week’s installment, we examine “the curse of knowledge.” That’s what happens when you know more about your … Read More → "So You Want to Be an Entrepreneur"

That’s with a “B”

EVE Crosses a New Emulator Threshold

by Bryon Moyer

July 14, 2009

But we’ve moved beyond that. Way beyond that. Why, in my day, a million dollars was a lot of money. Being a millionaire meant … Read More → "That’s with a “B”"

Taming Variability

by Dick Selwood

July 7, 2009

Back in the dark ages, when I first moved into the semiconductor realm, I used to compare the process geometries with the thickness of a human hair – which caused gasps of disbelief in a lay audience. Holding up a four-inch wafer of 16K SRAMS alongside a transistor can with its three wires, then explaining the many hundreds of thousands of can equivalents that were contained in the wafer, usually also caused gasps.

At a recent presentation I heard Kelin Kuhn, an Intel Fellow and a dynamic speaker, explain that a 32nm memory cell was dwarfed by … Read More → "Taming Variability"

A Measure of Respect

Using FPGAs on Specialized NIC Cards

by Bryon Moyer

July 7, 2009

Ours is a networked world. Anything that’s anything is connected to the Internet. No matter how unrelated, things somehow manage to get from here to somewhere completely different. Like the way your bank account password can magically appear in some server in an obscure corner of Russia. Or how some exalted prince in an exotic distant land like, say, Nigeria, actually knows who you are and trusts you enough to handle his money!

But it wasn’t ever so, and the infrastructure for hooking things onto the internet was once meticulously created from scratch … Read More → "A Measure of Respect"

Modular Linux

by Dick Selwood

July 7, 2009

A lot of press releases that drop into my email in-box are often, to be totally objective, pretty run of the mill. Naturally, I know that, for the guys building it, selling it and using it, the new release of software, the smallest widget, the fastest gizmo, or whatever, is important. But unless you are running product pages, as a journalist you just make a mental note and then consign the release to the delete file. But occasionally a release comes along that causes you to stop in your tracks. A little earlier this year there was a real … Read More → "Modular Linux"

A Measure of Respect

Using FPGAs on Specialized NIC Cards

by Bryon Moyer

July 7, 2009

But it wasn’t ever so, and the infrastructure for hooking things onto the internet was once meticulously created from scratch … Read More → "A Measure of Respect"

IP Inexact

A Look at Life in the IP World

by Bryon Moyer

June 30, 2009

Intellectual property (IP) is, in our modern edition of the SoC design world, the equivalent of the opposite gender (in our modern equal-opportunity-exasperation world): you can’t live with it and you can’t live without it. The thought of bundling up the results of some great achievement to share with your peers (or better yet, superiors?) was once a nice thought, something to do if you had some time. You could even spare someone a bunch of work that way. Or, if you were lucky, actually sell it.

There are, of course, a couple … Read More → "IP Inexact"

MIPS, Mario, TV, and Trends

by Jim Turley

June 30, 2009

This week, MIPS Technologies announced that it’s scored another TV set-top box design win. Specifically, the company proudly bragged that NXP (formerly Philips Semiconductors) is using the MIPS 24K processor core in its PNX85500 HDTV chip. It’s the first TV chip to be fabricated in 45-nm technology, a significant if short-lived distinction.

With all appropriate kudos to MIPS and NXP, the more interesting story here is why NXP chose to use a MIPS processor. The short answer is, because they had used MIPS before. In a word, inertia.