Articles – Page 522

ARM’s Race Escalates with Cortex-A9

September 22, 2009

In military parlance, an Osprey is a propeller-driven airplane that takes off and lands vertically, like a helicopter. The Osprey tilts its wings 90 degrees, the props pull it straight up, and the wings flip back again for conventional flight. Clever engineering, but a bit ungainly to look at.

Over in the less dangerous but equally contentious microprocessor world, ARM has also hatched its own Osprey, this one officially named the ARM Cortex-A9. The new A9 will be capable of 2-GHz clock rates, an unheard-of speed for an ARM core. The previous-generation A8 was barely able to … Read More → "ARM’s Race Escalates with Cortex-A9"

Universities and Electronics

by Dick Selwood

September 15, 2009

When the first semiconductors were created, they were the result of theoretical studies. As integration grew, so the device manufacturers and the equipment manufacturers pragmatically pushed ahead with brute force, scaling as they pushed down the Moore’s Law curve. Universities often struggled to keep abreast of developments, although, for a long way down the scaling curve, the mainstream underlying theories were pretty well understood.

Today we can no longer rely on scaling alone. Small channel effects, themselves difficult to understand and predict, are worked around by using double gates, raised sources and drains, surround gates, and … Read More → "Universities and Electronics"

AV Done Right. Finally.

AVnu Alliance Standardizes AVB Networking

by Kevin Morris

September 15, 2009

We’ve all experienced it.

The SPDIF output on device A doesn’t match with the analog line inputs on pre-amp B, which don’t synchronize with the VGA-to-composite-to-component de-interlacing, re-sampling, trans-formatter box connected to the monitor from the output device, which now really wants HDMI from your 1968 turntable. The problem of non-standard, proprietary, incompatible, poor-performing interfaces has dogged audio-visual equipment for decades, and most of us have a giant rat’s nest of cabling tucked behind some piece of furniture in our house to prove it.

In the modern era, when … Read More → "AV Done Right. Finally."

New Chips Don’t Suck (Power)

by Jim Turley

September 15, 2009

Within a week, Intel and Freescale both announced new high-end embedded processors. They’re both packed with multicore processors, DRAM controllers, and PCI Express interfaces. But, for all their similarities, they couldn’t be more different.

In this corner, we have Freescale’s new P1022, the sixth member of the QorIQ family. And in this corner, we have “Jasper Forest,” a mostly new family of chips from Intel. Both are more power-efficient than their predecessors, though, in one case, that’s not saying much. And both are well-supported with software … Read More → "New Chips Don’t Suck (Power)"

Your Boss’s Birthday Present

The Linley Group FPGA Report

by Kevin Morris

September 8, 2009

Flexible, powerful, and misunderstood, FPGAs are an admittedly enigmatic technology. Like the proverbial elephant amidst the blind men, the topic of FPGAs can produce a different view from every perspective – technology, applications, design tools, business… Sit down with a non-peer to have a conversation about FPGAs and you may end up wishing you were discussing something a little less controversial – like healthcare in the United States, perhaps.

Because of their inherent flexibility, FPGAs address a wide variety of problems in a number of different markets and application areas. In each of those areas, each FPGA vendor … Read More → "Your Boss’s Birthday Present"

Small Form Factor Boards and COM

by Dick Selwood

September 8, 2009

Do you know your Micro-ATX from your COM Micro? Or your Qseven from your XTX? The small form factor arena is one of those areas where it is very easy to get lost in the jargon, and, unless you are an enthusiast (and, if you are, then please forgive me), it can be very hard to get excited.

There are at least 150 different sizes and shapes for small form factor boards, according to expert (and enthusiast) Hermann Strass. And there seem to be almost as many organisations working in the area. As well as organisations like … Read More → "Small Form Factor Boards and COM"

Attack of the Merger Machine

by Jim Turley

September 8, 2009

I lost money on the stock market again this week.

The companies in question are ARC International and Virage Logic, both purveyors of silicon IP. That is to say, they don’t make anything, but they do help IC designers make stuff. [Full disclosure: the author was Vice President of Marketing and Technology Strategy for ARC International from 1999 through 2001.] The acquisition is a good thing for the industry and for IC designers (shareholders notwithstanding) and highlights a couple of big trends in this business.

Combining Formal Verification With Simulation

You Can Have Your Cake and Eat it Too!

by Bryon Moyer

September 8, 2009

It is well known that formal verification offers exhaustive proofs of correctness and can help find deep corner case bugs. Verification engineers have typically relegated its use to block-level designs, preferring to use simulation, the tried and tested workhorse, for chip-level and full-chip verification. The very strength of formal verification, namely its exhaustiveness, is also its Achilles heel in that with design size growth, formal engines run out of steam due to state space explosion. Simulation, on the other hand, scales well with design size and doesn’t suffer the same fate as formal verification.

Linux or Commercial OS?

by Dick Selwood

September 8, 2009

Watching the season premiere of “Mad Men” last week got me thinking about hair styles and those skinny neckties of the early ’60s. Exactly what is fashionable? Ask that question today among embedded software developers, and you’re bound to get a simple, straightforward answer: Android. And while Android rightly deserves much of the attention, it’s not the “be-all, end-all” of operating systems in use today.

No doubt there’s been a lot of noise and enthusiasm for Linux and Android. In fact, many developers viewed the rise … Read More → "Linux or Commercial OS?"

Seven Steps to an Accurate Worst-Case Power Analysis Using Xilinx Power Estimator (XPE)

by Jim Turley

September 2, 2009

Seven Steps to an Accurate Power Estimation

As a necessary step in any FPGA design, power and cooling specifications need to be properly set in order to create a functioning and reliable system. In most cases, these thermal and power specifications need to be set prior to PCB design and, due to the flexibility of FPGAs, often the FPGA design is not completed or sometimes even started prior … Read More → "Seven Steps to an Accurate Worst-Case Power Analysis Using Xilinx Power Estimator (XPE)"