Articles – Page 70

May 5, 2021

How do you do, fellow youths! This week we’re reviewing the chilliest gadget in the ’hood. I’m pretty sure that’s what it is, anyway.

Canadian startup Boréas has gone all-in on haptics, producing its own controller chip and partnering with TDK for a specialized actuator, to produce what it claims is the smallest, most power-efficient, and “strongest” haptic subassembly available. Like most haptic subsystems, it’s intended … Read More → "Boréas Does Haptics Better"

Journalism 010101

A Peek Inside the Dark and Fevered Mind of a Technology Journalist

by Jim Turley

May 3, 2021

Ever wonder what it’s like to be a journalist? No? Look away now, because here we go.

Journalism is mostly about filtering. There are a lot of things you could write about; the trick is to pick something interesting, useful, practical, and newsworthy. Everyone weights those filters differently.

Sometimes you go in search of the news, and sometimes the news finds you. There’s a whole industry of public relations and investor relations … Read More → "Journalism 010101"

Want to Learn Programming and Microcontrollers?

by Max Maxfield

April 29, 2021

The funny thing about knowing something yourself is that you tend to assume everyone else knows it also. This is especially true on a site like EEJournal that attracts electronic engineers and embedded systems developers from all walks of life. But the funny thing is — when you actually get to sit down and chat with people — you begin to realize how little they typically know outside their own area of expertise.

The same is true the other way round of course. In fact, although I don’t like to boast, … Read More → "Want to Learn Programming and Microcontrollers?"

Time, Ethernet, and White Rabbits

Technology Synchronizes Widely Spaced Devices

by Jim Turley

April 26, 2021

Physics teaches us that distance is time. Light travels at a finite speed, so looking at a faraway object is, in a sense, looking back in time. Even the nearest star to our own, Proxima Centauri, is 4.25 lightyears away, so the light we see now is 4 years and 3 months old. You can’t look at it now because “now” is relative.

Sitting in the back row of an auditorium, you can hear an audio simulcast or livestream sooner than you’ … Read More → "Time, Ethernet, and White Rabbits"

High Entropy is the Foundation for High Security

by Max Maxfield

April 22, 2021

Perhaps not surprisingly in the light of all the cyber-attacks and data breaches we’ve been seeing recently, the topics of cyber-security, cyber-resiliency, and securing one’s supply chains are at the forefront of our minds.

Several of my own columns have touched these topics in recent months, such as Yay! Finally! A Way to Secure the Supply Chain! and Read More → "High Entropy is the Foundation for High Security"

Wine Wi-Fi Finds Fine Vines

Two Tech Companies Help Wineries Sell “Bottled Poetry”

by Jim Turley

April 21, 2021

Winemaking is an occupation steeped in tradition, to mix my metaphors. Winery websites feature richly sepia-toned photos of rugged Old World types squeezing the soil through their hands, gazing at grape clusters, and extolling their great-great-grandfathers’ foresight in planting head-trained Zinfandel vines with original rootstock in the rich alluvial soil of Napa Valley. It’s enough to drive you to drink.

It’s also a business that seems immune to technology – indeed, that deliberately shuns and avoids it, at least publicly. But there’s some tech in the back room, … Read More → "Wine Wi-Fi Finds Fine Vines"

Xilinx Introduces Kria SoMs

Raising the Level of Integration

by Kevin Morris

April 20, 2021

Integration is the fundamental fuel that drives technical innovation. Each new node of Moore’s Law has allowed us to “Cram More Components” onto our integrated circuits, facilitating greater and greater levels of integration on chunks of silicon. But even in today’s “System on Chip” era, we do not truly have “systems” on a chip.

Sure, we can pack processors, a lot of close peripherals, and some memory onto a single chip, but even our most integrated ICs pose challenges for bringing them into modern systems. The latest memory and data interfaces place heavy demands on … Read More → "Xilinx Introduces Kria SoMs"

Is an Instruction Set an API?

Recent Google v. Oracle Ruling Raises Questions as Well as Answers

by Jim Turley

April 19, 2021

No less an authority than the United States Supreme Court just ruled that a program’s application programming interface can be copied under the doctrine of copyright “fair use.” Google copied thousands of lines of Oracle’s code in order to implement its own version of the Java API without actually licensing the official Java API. The Court ruled that Google didn’t need a license because it’s okay to duplicate the API without … Read More → "Is an Instruction Set an API?"

Predictive Maintenance Evaluation Kit for Smart Buildings

by Max Maxfield

April 15, 2021

One of the myriad problems I face — in addition to (a) being persistently pursued by gaggles of groupies and (b) the fact that all of my groupies are cranky, cantankerous, and curmudgeonly old engineers of the male persuasion — is that of being inundated by barrages of information from companies scattered around the globe.

Being only human (although it pains me to say so), I tend to focus on whomever is jumping up and down and shouting the loudest. As a result, companies who aren’t “pinging” me on a regular … Read More → "Predictive Maintenance Evaluation Kit for Smart Buildings"

Clever Hack Finds Mystery CPU Instructions

Enterprising Programmer Uses x86 Microcode to Reveal Itself

by Jim Turley

April 14, 2021

In the 1966 movie Fantastic Voyage, a team of doctors and scientists gets miniaturized and injected into the bloodstream of a human patient. They and their yellow submarine navigate past heart valves, battle corpuscles, and swim in tear ducts. It provides an inside look into biological workings most of us never see.

An enterprising Hungarian engineer, Can Bölük at Verilave, has … Read More → "Clever Hack Finds Mystery CPU Instructions"