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I’m Pickin’ Up Bad Vibrations: How to Predict Motor Failure Before it Happens

Early Detection Helps to Prevent Factory Downtime
by Steven Leibson
April 18, 2022

I’m pickin’ up good vibrations
 She’s giving me the excitations – Good Vibrations, The Beach Boys

I live in a condo. When I drive into my condo, I pass through two gates to get to my parking spaces. Each gate employs a motor to open and close it. When we installed these gates several years ago, they worked great. However, as the years have progressed, the gate mechanisms have started to break down. Sometimes a mechanical linkage fails. Sometimes a … Read More → "I’m Pickin’ Up Bad Vibrations: How to Predict Motor Failure Before it Happens"

New Semiconductor Technologies Are Rarely What They Seem at First Glance

Microprocessors, Microcontrollers, and FPGAs Were All Once Sleepers, Much Like the “Ted Lasso” TV Series
by Steven Leibson
April 11, 2022

I watched the first season of “Ted Lasso” with my family over the Thanksgiving holiday in late November. If you’re one of the few people, like me, who aren’t familiar with the series, it’s based on a 2013 concept ad series by NBC Sports touting the channel’s coverage of the UK’s top-level Premier League football (“soccer” in the US) matches. Jason Sudeikis starred in the ads and later developed the ads’ concept of an American football coach transplanted to the UK to coach a UK football team into a television series that … Read More → "New Semiconductor Technologies Are Rarely What They Seem at First Glance"

PCI-SIG’s PCIe 6.0 Spec Continues the Long, Happy Evolution of PCI Express

It’s Been Around Since 2003 and Will Continue To Be With Us for Years To Come
by Steven Leibson
April 6, 2022

Well, PCI-SIG has done it once again. They’ve doubled the peak maximum bandwidth of the PCI Express (PCIe) bus by releasing the PCIe 6.0 specifications on January 11.  A 16-lane PCIe 6.0 connection has a peak bidirectional bandwidth of 256 Gbytes/sec. That’s pretty darn fast. How’d they do it? The simple answer is that they ripped a page from the high-speed Ethernet spec and adopted PAM4 modulation. PAM4 modulation encodes two bits with each signal excursion by using 4-level voltage signaling instead of the familiar, digital, 2-level signaling. Presto! You’ve doubled the bandwidth. PAM4 Serdes … Read More → "PCI-SIG’s PCIe 6.0 Spec Continues the Long, Happy Evolution of PCI Express"

Want to Make Your Data Impossibly Secure?

by Max Maxfield
April 5, 2022

I’m currently ensconced in the command chair in the Pleasure Dome (my office) drooling with desire, as opposed to my usual modus operandi which involves me simply sitting here drooling. I now know that I want an SSD drive that is “impossibly secure” — so secure, in fact, that it renders my precious data invisible on the basis that attackers cannot compromise what they cannot see.

The reason for my newfound desire for this incredible level of security — the term “Impossibly Secure” has been trademarked by the bodaciously brainy boffins … Read More → "Want to Make Your Data Impossibly Secure?"

Printer Manufacturers Hoist by Their Own Petard

Semiconductor Shortage Short Circuits Printer Cartridge DRM
by Steven Leibson
April 4, 2022

Once upon a time, long, long ago, printers used ribbons on metal spools that looked much like typewriter ribbons. In fact, some of them were typewriter ribbons. Then manufacturers started to develop plastic cartridges to hold the ribbons. These cartridges made ribbon installation much easier, but they served another purpose as well. They were proprietary mechanical housings. If you wanted to buy a new ribbon for your printer, you needed to buy it from the same manufacturer that made your printer. Ribbon cartridges provided a new, … Read More → "Printer Manufacturers Hoist by Their Own Petard"

Founding Stories of Famous Electronic Distributors, Part 3

Two Component Manufacturer Origin Stories from The ECIA’s New Book
by Steven Leibson
March 28, 2022

In Parts 1 and 2 of this article, I discussed the founding stories of two early pioneers in electronic component distribution (Sager and Allied) and two post-war distributors (TTI and Digi-Key). These stories came from a new book published by the ECIA (Electronic Components Industry Association) titled “Electronic Component Industry Evolution: 100 Years of the Authorized Channel.” The ECIA’s book also contains few founding stories for companies that … Read More → "Founding Stories of Famous Electronic Distributors, Part 3"

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