The commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) electronics initiative of the mid-1990s occurred for two key reasons. First, acquiring customized components that could withstand harsh military environments came at a cost premium. Second, highly desirable leading-edge technologies, driven by larger market forces, were being developed for commercial applications. For these reasons, the U.S. government mandated that military contractors begin using a COTS approach, not only to reduce costs, but also to take advantage of emerging technologies.

COTS is based on the premise that military electronics programs could adopt or adapt commercially available components, boards, and systems, … Read More → "Going Beyond COTS Strengthens Mil/Aero PLD Applications"

Everyone knows the ECO. It is a classic case of an acronym acting as a euphemism. Reducing a problematic situation to an established process represented by a simple trio of letters diverts attention from the underlying blunder. “Have Susan process Charlie’s ECO before we bring up that final prototype” sounds much, much more palatable than “Thanks to Charlie’s monumental screwup, Susan will have to attach a big red jumper wire that will now gleam like a beacon of stupidity from the back of the board on every one of our first million units.”

As long … Read More → "Time for a Change"

The FPGA market is a multi-faceted battlefield. Particularly between the largest two suppliers, everything is a race. There is a race to reach a new process node first, a race for the largest device, a race for the highest frequency, and a race for the lowest-cost parts. Silicon-based bragging rights aren’t enough to keep the conflict interesting, however. Both Altera and Xilinx, the two market-dominant FPGA suppliers, invest huge amounts of resources in the development of tools and IP to complement their device offerings.

While not as visible as the war of the … Read More → "Altera’s Quartus II 6.0"

As advanced FPGAs have grown to ASIC proportions in terms of size and complexity, their design and verification have become correspondingly more difficult. This has driven the need for greater expertise in the design and verification of FPGAs. However, many companies, large and small, lack either the resources or the expertise for these demanding designs, so they turn to engineering service firms like A2e Technologies.

Typically projects reach us at a point in the design schedule where schedules are tight and time is of the essence. We need to get up … Read More → "On the Cutting-Edge of FPGA Design and Verification"

Innovation is a hot topic these days. We ourselves have billed innovation as “the fuel that powers technological progress” in our industry. You’d think, with the industry’s first 65nm FPGA family rolling into production, we’d be saluting another salvo of innovation and inspiration from the world’s largest FPGA company. We are, of course, but even more than that, we’re chronicling the execution of an equally important factor in high-tech success – learning. In their introduction of V5, Xilinx has shown us all that they’re a company that learns – learns from their successes, … Read More → "Virtex-5 is Alive"

We humans like to worry. Instead of being content with just living our happy lives, walking around enjoying the sunshine, eating our food, talking to each other on our mobile phones, and designing our next-generation electronic products, we mull and fuss about whatever nemesis might come along and end our little party. Will global warming overheat our junctions? Will earthquakes and volcanoes shake us into spilling our cocktails? Will comets and meteors crash into our spinning ball of fun, bringing on another ice age? With every additional year we speculate about new spoilers that might spell the end of … Read More → "Altera Readies for 65nm"