The race car flies into the pits just below the maximum speed – its automatic governor making sure that the team isn’t assessed a penalty.  Exhaust gases vent at 1500 degrees fahrenheit as throttle valves close.  Over a million dollars worth of high-performance technology glides down the tarmac to the designated pit.  The crew is already engaged: tires are off and replacement rubber is being mounted, fuel is gushing into the tank through a high-volume filler connection, and the pit chief runs out with the critical component to keep the team in the race – … Read More → "Duct Tape, WD-40, FPGAs"

Actel has announced a significant round of enhancements to their space-bound FPGA families, including a new, power-efficient line called RTAX-SL.  Before we jump into those announcements, let’s have a brief discussion on what happens when we put tiny little space helmets on our FPGAs and launch them into orbit.

FPGAs and spacecraft would seem like a match made in the heavens.  As you might guess, spacecraft are far from mass-produced.  Developing a custom chip such as an ASIC for a satellite can result in astronomical unit prices by the time you amortize … Read More → "Space FPGAs Get a Boost"

The sculptor Auguste Rodin was asked how he created his amazing statues.  He replied, “I choose a block of marble and chip off whatever I don’t need.”  Michelangelo is also sometimes attributed with a similar quote.  “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.”  These two quotes are probably the origin of the well-worn story about the sculptor who, when asked how to carve a statue of a horse said, “I simply chisel away everything that doesn’t look like a … Read More → "Altium’s Alternative"

If you own a Cajun cookbook, you may have noticed that virtually every recipe begins with this step.  If you can’t make a Roux, you can’t cook Cajun.  The recipe for Roux (if you can find one) is always fairly vague – “Put some flour and oil in a pot and heat until the color changes to brown.” How much flour?  How much oil? How much heat? What shade of brown?  All of these questions are, as we learned in engineering school, “left as an exercise for the … Read More → "First, Make a Roux"

This week, at the Design Automation Conference (DAC) in San Diego, FPGA tool specialists Synplicity announced the acquisition of the Swedish company Hardi Electronics – supplier of FPGA-based prototyping boards.  Why is this interesting?  It gives us a number of insights into the increasing role of FPGAs in system-level verification, the complex nature of the tools market for FPGAs, and the volatility of the EDA business in general.

FPGAs have long been used as prototyping vehicles for ASIC designs, ASSP designs, board-based system designs, and of course for FPGA-based designs.  As a long-time leading … Read More → "FPGAs at DAC"

High-speed system interconnects have a large impact on integrated circuit (IC) package design. High-speed connectivity requires fabrication of packages that are able to support very fast varying, broadband signals with good signal integrity (SI).  Based on Moore’s law, on-chip clock frequency doubles every 18 months and the intrinsic delay of the gate decreases exponentially to a few picoseconds (ps). Increasing I/O counts add another element to this equation. Rent’s rule states that the number of I/O will double in the next ten years, which means that there will be a lot … Read More → "FPGA Packaging and Signal Integrity"