Once the embedded computer came on the scene, however, the game changed rapidly. Because most product-specific features could now be implemented in hardware, the physical difference between products began to diminish. Block diagrams of almost every type of product from mobile phones to GPS receivers to digital cameras to high-end washing machines started to look surprisingly similar. In today’s typical system, there’s a processor or two, a few peripherals, the least memory we can get away with, and a bus or switch fabric stitching it all together. The secret sauce is no longer contained in … Read More → "System Design by Swarm"

At some level, the business of running any big international corporation is largely the same. In high technology, however, the mundanity of macromanaging a large organization often insulates executives from the actual technology challenges faced by both their customers and their own engineers. At Altium, they do things a little differently. Nick is an electronics engineer at heart, and his company provides design automation software aimed at helping the average working engineer get his job done better and faster. In order to accomplish that goal, Nick feels that everyone working to deliver that capability, himself included, needs to walk … Read More → "A Mile in Their Shoes"

Somewhere, possibly thousands of miles away and maybe dead by now, there is an engineer for whom the design of this particular scope was a major project – someone who fought with colleagues over issues like the choice of materials in the image sensor, the scheme for light amplification, and the design of the power supply. Perhaps the project was some cold-war-era Soviet skunkworks design. Unlike me, this engineer understands (or understood) almost instinctively why this device continues to operate for several minutes after it is powered down. His story, however, is probably long forgotten.

It was the … Read More → "Forgotten Battles"

With HDTV now making the transition from exotic to ordinary, consumers naturally expect the audio portion of their experience to keep pace with the vast improvement in video quality. While stereo, lower-fidelity sound might have been perfectly acceptable with standard definition television and movie programming, the consumer’s standard for acceptable audio performance is elevated considerably by the act of plunking down a few thousand for the latest-generation plasma or DLP monitors with HDTV tuners and DVRs. Chances are, they’ve got a similarly expensive sound system with way more than two channels eagerly awaiting top-quality content … Read More → "MIPS for your Media Room"