Introduction

As transistor technology quickly shrinks toward the vanishing point, embedded devices are taking over the marketplace.  One of the key challenges of designing an embedded electronic device is maintaining reasonable power consumption in order to maximize battery life.  For design engineers wanting to combine the functionality of a microcontroller with their own “special sauce” logic, a standard off-the-shelf microcontroller plus Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) combination has long been the preferred option. 

Despite the ease of use and availability of FPGAs, they are notoriously power hungry and … Read More → "Comparing Power Consumption of FPGAs with Customizable Microcontrollers"

FPGAs have always benefited from the rising waterline of Moore’s Law.  When the first programmable devices hit the market, the price of programmability was very high.  The amount of density, power, and performance you gave up to gain the privilege of programming your hardware on your desktop or in your system was so large that only a few specialized applications could justify the programmability penalty.  As process nodes passed, however, Moore’s Law worked in our favor.  As transistors got cheaper, faster, and thriftier on power, the relative disadvantage of FPGAs disappeared … Read More → "Maximizing Your Millimeters2"

A couple weeks ago we looked at the state of FPGA low-power design from the standpoint of hardware. We saw a range of features, from very little to branded feature sets. But none of that matters without tools: tools are the window into the silicon, and no silicon feature has a shred of value unless a tool uses it (as can be testified to by the scores of now-defunct PLD businesses that were run by “the cheapest silicon always wins and software is annoying” types). And with a domain like low-power design, the tools can … Read More → "Making FPGAs Cool Again – Part 2"

The royalty walk quietly among the common folk here.  The thick-carpeted mahogany-veneered opulence typical of high-tech presidential palaces is nowhere to be seen.  Instead, on an ordinary floor in an ordinary building overlooking a nondescript cube farm are two adjacent rooms that would probably be conference rooms at your company.  Not the special, glossy, wood-wrapped, electric-view-screen-and-sound-system, “we entertain important clients in here” style of conference rooms, but rather the “grab your coffee and duck in here so we can scribble some stuff on the whiteboard” type.  In your company, each of these would probably be named after a river … Read More → "Passing the Torch"