Two and a half decades after deciding that I wanted to live in Silicon Valley, the opportunity to move there finally presented itself. I’d been visiting the area since joining HP in 1975, and Silicon Valley was clearly the epicenter of electronics innovation during the last quarter of the 20th century. When the opportunity came in 1999, my family was living in Boston. We uprooted and moved 3000 miles from the Right Coast to the Left Coast.
Although never my intention, I’ve now … Read More → "Two Decades in Silicon Valley: Hats I’ve Worn, Jobs I’ve Had, Lessons Learned"
In my previous column, Metrology Maketh the Man (and Woman, and Silicon Chip), I made mention of the fact that the human race has occasionally dropped the metaphorical ball on the technology front. The example I used was of Hero of Alexandria, who failed to invent the steam engine 2,000 years ago. Now, you might argue that lots of other people failed to invent the steam engine at the same time — including all of … Read More → "Dropping the Ball and Casting Aspersions"
Metrology is the scientific study of measurement. The ability to measure things helps in locating and identifying problems and weak spots in production lines and processes. I was just introduced to a new molecular sensor for semiconductor metrology that may be poised to take the chip fabrication process by storm, but first…
When we look around, it’s easy to be awed by all of the amazing technology that surrounds us. I know I am. But I also know that we are prone to making errors (when I say “we,” … Read More → "Metrology Maketh the Man (and Woman, and Silicon Chip)"
It’s no secret that we are drowning in data. Today’s applications and algorithms require almost incomprehensible amounts of data, and that means the bandwidth requirements are exploding faster than networking and memory technologies can handle. Even with the most advanced accelerators we can build with our FPGAs, we can be choked trying to get data on and off the chip and finding places to store information as we are processing.
Even though memory bandwidth has been increasing rapidly, the demand is growing faster. Pushing around zettabytes of information … Read More → "Xilinx Launches Versal HBM"
Another day, another new microprocessor architecture. There was a time in the Nineties when everyone and his dog was designing a new processor. They were all going to revolutionize the world, crush Intel, enable new cutting-edge devices, and show us how it’s really supposed to be done. The nerd journals were filled with new CPU acronyms like RISC, VLIW, IPC, EPIC, ROB, ILP, SSE2, TLB, BTB, AES-NI, SIMD, and more. And, of course, IPO.
Fortunately for us, those days of revolution are over. The majority of those new processor … Read More → "Quadric CPU Combines AI with Conventional Code"
It’s computers all the way down. We know about recursion in software, but it’s surprising to find it occurring in hardware. How many computers are really inside your computer? One? A couple? Maybe a dozen? In reality, it’s probably hundreds.
Normal people count the average PC, Mac, or Linux box as one computer. But, as engineers, we know there’s really more than one processor inside. But how many, really? In the early days of the IBM Personal Computer Model 5150, the keyboard had its own 8048 microcontroller chip … Read More → "How Many Computers Are in Your Computer?"
If you are a hardware design engineer, you are doubtless familiar with the concept of formal verification as it applies to hardware design, but have you ever considered how formal verification might relate to software and the developers thereof (bless their little cotton socks)?
Life can be a rum old thing, and no mistake. When it comes to formal verification, for example, it’s interesting to discover that this little rascal was originally conceived in the 1960s with software in mind. Sad to relate, however, my understanding is that few ( … Read More → "If You Can’t Trust TrustInSoft, Who Can You Trust?"
I’m sure Harald Gormsson (ca. 910–985) never saw this coming. The wireless specification that bears his nom de guerre has been extended, amended, and adapted to encompass all sorts of new applications. What began as an excuse to wear a wireless earpiece is now a way to connect to our cars, stream music to our speakers, and locate our missing pets.
Wait, what was that last bit? Yes, Bluetooth is more than just a short-range pipe for transferring data. It … Read More → "Bluetooth AoA, AoD Find the Way Indoors"
If Elon says it, it must be true. Autonomous vehicles don’t need no steenkin’ lidar sensors. We can do it all with cameras. A nice idea, but converting camera images into useful data in real time is tricky. Very tricky.
Cameras are stupid, mostly because they operate independent of one another. They have no spatial awareness, no concept of depth, and no idea of what’s important or what’s trivial. As mammals, we have two eyes pointed more or less in the same direction to give us stereoscopic … Read More → "Turning Flat Images Into 3D Scenes"
