It may seem counterintuitive, but 2020 was a very good year. Good if you were in the business of making and selling semiconductors, that is. After a depressing 2019, 2020 saw global sales of processors, memories, and miscellaneous chips of every description rise by a healthy 7.3%. That’s good news!
These numbers … Read More → "2020 Was a Great Year! (for Chips)"
When you’re in the processor business, you’re also in the compiler business. Like it or not, inventing a new CPU or MCU with its own instruction set means you’re also on the hook for its entire software-development toolchain. In fact, a lot of “chip companies” employ more programmers than circuit designers.
And you thought inventing a new computer was hard.
That was the tall order facing Eta Compute. One of many, in fact. The small startup took on all sorts of … Read More → "Eta Compute Pivots to AI Software"
When I was a little lad about six years old growing up in England circa 1963, my mom and dad were both working, so I used to spend the halcyon days of summer up the road at my Auntie Barbara’s house hanging out with my cousin Gillian (who was one year younger than me) and the other kids on the street.
You have to remember that our homes were small by American standards (“three-up, three-down, semi-detached,” which they call a duplex in the USA), with correspondingly sized furniture and appliances. … Read More → "Say what? When it Comes to Voice Control, The Future is Now!"
With all the turmoil in the world, it’s nice to know that we can rely on our connected cloud-based devices. Oh, wait. No, we can’t. They’re about as reliable as fifth-hand ’50s Fiat.
Cloud behemoth Google went down last month, stranding thousands upon thousands of users around the globe who rely on Gmail, Google Docs, YouTube, Hangouts, Analytics, Google Maps, Blogger, and nearly everything else Google owns (which is to say, nearly everything). It was like losing electricity or running water if you were a G-Suite (sorry, … Read More → "Say Goodbye to More Cloud Services"
Some security weaknesses would be hilarious if they weren’t so serious. And one man and his crack research team have found dozens of surprising ways to crack seemingly impenetrable computers. You’ve got to give them points for originality.
There are a lot of ways to secure a computer, depending on what you’re trying to prevent. Do you want to keep secure information inside? Do you want to prevent outside malware from getting in? Do you want to limit access to only the right people? The list goes … Read More → "Hacking a Secure Air-Gapped Computer"
I worry that when writing these columns, I sometimes start by meandering my way off into the weeds, cogitating and ruminating on “this and that” before eventually bringing the story back home. So, on the basis that “a change is as good as a rest,” as the old English proverb goes, let’s do things a little differently this time.
Take a look at the image below. What do you see in addition to the penny piece? What I see is a Read More → "An AI Storm is Coming as Analog AI Surfaces in Sensors"
According to tech folklore, Carver Mead actually coined the term “Moore’s Law” – some ten years or so after the publication of Gordon Moore’s landmark 1965 Electronics Magazine article “Cramming More Components Onto Integrated Circuits.” For the next five and a half decades, the world was reshaped by the self-fulfilling prophecy outlined in that article. Namely, that every two years or so, semiconductor companies would be able to double the number of transistors that could be fabricated on a single semiconductor chip.
That biennial doubling of transistors led most noticeably … Read More → "Neuromorphic Revolution"
Another year, another Intel bug.
What makes this bug interesting is that it’s so crafty. It’s fun to see what loopholes hardware and software can discover all by themselves. If you’re a homeowner, you know that water is amazingly devious. It can intrude anywhere, including moving uphill, through tiny holes, and along porous surfaces. Stopping leaks – or finding bugs – feels like a never-ending chore.
In this case, an Intel bug fix introduced a new bug. Ironic? Sure, but, to be fair, … Read More → "Security Flaw Afflicts Intel x86 Boot ROMs"
As you may imagine, I receive an eye-watering number of emails each and every day. To give you an idea as to the size of the problem: as I pen these words, this is my first day back at work following a four-day break for the Christmas Holiday weekend. I got up at 6:00 a.m. this morning and came straight to my office. I ate lunch at my desk. It turned 3:30 p.m. a few minutes ago. I’ve only now finished wading through the emails that came in over the weekend and just now started writing this column.</ … Read More → "Decapitating Malware with Content Disarm and Reconstruction (CDR) Technology"
“A ship in port is safe, but that’s not what ships are for.” – Grace Hopper
You’re probably not reading this article. You’ve got better things to do. But if your browser does somehow accidentally send you here, I’d like to point out that 2020 was, in fact, a fairly decent year as far as electronic engineering technology goes.
