Articles – Page 534

Standardising on Analogue

February 17, 2009

Have you ever wanted to spend vast amounts of time in a conference room, real or virtual, arguing about the precise meanings of words? Trying to accommodate the strongly expressed and sometimes incompatible views of people, some of whom know less than they think they do about the subject in hand, a subject you are knowledgeable on and feel strongly about? When you have reached a conclusion, are you then happy to sit back for months, while even more people express even more views on how you got it wrong, how what has emerged doesn’t meet the … Read More → "Standardising on Analogue"

Software Archeology

Modernizing Old Systems

by Bryon Moyer

February 17, 2009

They’d been digging for only a couple weeks, with laborious care to make sure they didn’t inadvertently destroy that which had lain in quiet repose for centuries. Even so, the outlines of a once-thriving community were starting to reveal themselves. The job right now was to remove the dirt – and only the dirt – and then map out the structures and artifacts as they found them. Creating an outline of the habitation was more or less straightforward – anyone with a reasonably organized mind could come in and identify walls, openings, firepits, and … Read More → "Software Archeology"

Mind the Gap

Taray Bridges Boards and FPGAs

by Kevin Morris

February 17, 2009

Printed circuit board (PCB) design software is one of the oldest segments of electronic design automation (EDA). Long before people were doing synthesis, formal verification, HDL simulation, or most of the other modern design automation processes, tools were around that helped us automate the design and layout of our PCBs. Today’s PCB tools carry the legacy of that long history – both conceptually and, in some cases, literally. Some of today’s PCB tools still carry pre-historic code that was developed long before… well, before FPGAs came along, for example.

Why should we care … Read More → "Mind the Gap"

Maximizing Flash Lifetimes

A Look at Flash Management Strategies

by Bryon Moyer

February 10, 2009

Flash memory is cool to keep around because it’s non-volatile, it’s small, it’s convenient, and, dressed up in all manner of stickwear, well, who can deny that it’s just so darn cute. But peel back those outer attractive layers, and you find much complexity lurking within. For, while we like to think of them as just another memory that we can plug into our PCs, in fact they’re nothing like it. A surprising amount of work goes into writing and reading the gotcha picture you took of grandma stashing … Read More → "Maximizing Flash Lifetimes"

Cleaning Up the Garbage

by Bryon Moyer

February 10, 2009

Angie was a project manager, and she managed a lot of projects. These were fast-moving jobs that required a lot of attention to make sure everything went smoothly. While she tried as hard as she could to plan out as many project details as possible, she knew from painful experience that unexpected things happen and that following a static script didn’t work. She had to keep track of things “in real time,” noting action items carefully to make sure everything got done.

Over time, she had become increasingly sophisticated in her ability to … Read More → "Cleaning Up the Garbage"

Serial Soirée

Altera Tempts with Tons of Transceivers

by Kevin Morris

February 10, 2009

The age of mainstream 40nm FPGAs has now arrived.

Last May, Altera announced the first-ever 40nm FPGA family – Stratix IV. Last quarter, that announcement became a practical reality as the company began shipping Stratix IV devices to customers. Last week, in dueling announcements, Altera announced their second wave of Stratix IV devices, while Xilinx rolled out their new Virtex-6 and Spartan-6 families. Across all of these announcements, one thing is clear. The race for supremacy in the 40/45nm process node for FPGAs focuses on the proliferation of high-speed serial I/O. </ … Read More → "Serial Soirée"

The Road Ahead

The ITRS Updates The Forecast

by Bryon Moyer

February 3, 2009

Each year the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS) does an update. In case you haven’t seen it, it’s a comprehensive review of where the industry thinks the industry is going. It covers everything from materials to geometries to packaging.

2007 was a weighty update. It seemed like the whole technology roadmap got a good scrubbing. If it’s the first update you’ve seen, you might get the impression that things change a lot from year to year and that visibility is limited. Which might not be that big a surprise & … Read More → "The Road Ahead"

Freescale Bets on “Net-Book” Processor Chip

by Jim Turley

February 3, 2009

Just in time for the post-holiday buying season, Freescale has announced its newest embedded microprocessor, the i.MX51. Like other chips in the company’s MX line, the i.MX51 is an ARM-based chip intended for relatively high-end portable systems. Whereas the i.MX31 and ’35 parts are often found inside of automobiles, the ’51 is being touted as the ideal processor for a whole new category of products: the “net-book” computer.

Priced at less than $20 in volume, including its companion power-management and audio-codec chips, the i.MX51 bundle is a bargain. Freescale’ … Read More → "Freescale Bets on “Net-Book” Processor Chip"

Grand Unification Theory

Xilinx Launches 40/45nm Virtex-6/Spartan-6

by Kevin Morris

February 3, 2009

It’s all coming together.

In response to a rapidly broadening market and increasingly niched and specialized competition, the world’s largest FPGA company has narrowed and focused. With the celebration of their 25th anniversary and the introduction of their new Virtex-6 and Spartan-6 lines, the company is demonstrating the principle of doing more with less – ironically solving a broader class of problems with a narrower range of solutions.

Of course, a lot of this consolidation actually takes place under the hood, where most designers may never notice. As the company has demonstrated … Read More → "Grand Unification Theory"

The End of Silicon Valley

by Jim Turley

January 27, 2009

A moment of silence, please, for Silicon Valley. Intel announced last week it would close its chip-manufacturing plant located near the company’s headquarters in Santa Clara – and with it, the very last chip fab anywhere in Silicon Valley.

The technology that gave its name to the Santa Clara valley, once called “the valley of heart’s delight” for no immediately obvious reason, has left for greener pastures. When I started working in electronics, Santa Clara still had fruit orchards in it. Chip plants alternated with cherry trees. Now there’s … Read More → "The End of Silicon Valley"