Articles – Page 90

March 18, 2020

“Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.” – Edward Tufte

Want to know how much energy your new battery device will consume? The answer may be in Paris.

Wisebatt is an 11-person startup based in the French capital city, and they’ve produced a tool that estimates battery life and power consumption with remarkable accuracy. Remarkable, because you don’t have to give it very much information to go on. … Read More → "Estimating Power Before You Start"

Xilinx Boosts the Bandwidth

New Devices and Boards Raise the Ante

by Kevin Morris

March 17, 2020

A few years ago, we all thought we were on the cusp of “enough” bandwidth. If everybody with a smartphone could stream HD video simultaneously, what else could we even want? Surely an infrastructure that could handle that task would be ready for whatever else we wanted to throw at it.

Oh, how wrong we were.

Video still is the biggest bandwidth hog, but now we’re talking 4K and 8K at terrifying bit-rates. And, instead of just one smartphone per person, we’ve … Read More → "Xilinx Boosts the Bandwidth"

SiTime Oscillator Beats on Rocks

Programmable Timing Components are More Flexible than Crystals

by Jim Turley

March 16, 2020

“What Youth deemed crystal, Age finds out was dew.” – Robert Browning

“We are in a somewhat uninteresting territory.” These are the words of Piyush Sevalia, Executive Vice President of Marketing for SiTime. You have to give the man points for honesty.

He’s not wrong. SiTime is in a tough business, and a lot of their challenges aren’t technical, but evangelical. … Read More → "SiTime Oscillator Beats on Rocks"

Work from Home Survival Guide

EE Journal’s Pro Tips

by Kevin Morris

March 12, 2020

With the COVID-19 situation continuing to evolve, numerous companies in our industry have been telling their employees to work from home (WFH) lately to enable “social distancing” to slow the spread of the virus. Large numbers of engineers, marketers, and other technology professionals may find themselves hanging out on the sofa, trying to squeeze out a normal day’s work via VPN over a cacophony of kids, dogs, and soap operas. It may sound fun at first, but after a few days, a lot of folks may find themselves pining for the cubicles.

How to Stop an Embedded Virus

Microchip CEC1712 Helps Stop Malware Before it Starts

by Jim Turley

March 12, 2020

“I eat at the unlimited buffet of danger.” – R.J. Haywire

Security is de rigueur these days, and, like machine learning and cloud connectivity, it’s moving down into cheaper and cheaper devices. Now even low-end microcontrollers have embedded security features – and it’s still not enough.

Mention “security” to most engineers, though, and they’ll roll their eyes. It’s something the boss says they need to have, but nobody really … Read More → "How to Stop an Embedded Virus"

New DSP IP Makes Your Eyes Water

by Max Maxfield

March 11, 2020

It seems that almost every day I hear about some cool and exciting techno-wonder originating with those clever guys and gals in Israel. For example, I currently have a WifiWall Traveler sitting in my shirt pocket. This little beauty, which came from the folks at WifiWall.com, is small enough to fit in the palm of my hand (2.5" x 1.75" x 0.75"), yet it's awesome in its power. … Read More →

Ampere Altra Addresses ARM Aspirations

Cloud Server Chip Has 80 CPU Cores and Big Shoes to Fill

by Jim Turley

March 9, 2020

“My Zen garden’s more serene than yours.” — Dan Piraro, “Bizarro”

The most powerful force in the computer world is inertia. We stick with the software, tools, operating systems, and hardware architectures that we know, and it takes enormous effort to dislodge us from those foundations. Newton’s Third Law states, “a computer ecosystem in motion will remain in motion, pretty much forever.”

How else to explain the continued prevalence of QWERTY keyboards? Or Windows PCs running on x86 processors? Or of … Read More → "Ampere Altra Addresses ARM Aspirations"

Introducing Girls to Engineering

by Max Maxfield

March 5, 2020

I was recently introduced to the concept of Engineers Week (EWeek), which was founded by the National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE) in 1951. This year, EWeek took place 16-22 February. Of particular interest to me was … Read More → "Introducing Girls to Engineering"

Lattice mVision Stack

Powering Up Low-Power Embedded Vision

by Kevin Morris

March 3, 2020

We’ve elaborated at length in these pages on the remarkable capabilities FPGAs bring to the world of embedded vision and vision analytics. With enormous numbers of new applications demanding embedded vision capabilities at the endpoint and edge, there’s a huge green field of opportunity out there, just waiting for FPGAs to take over. The ability of FPGAs to accelerate AI tasks on a miserly power budget, perform various video filtering and processing tasks, and adapt to handle basically any interface standard for the myriad sensors, displays, and other related hardware out there is unmatched … Read More → "Lattice mVision Stack"

Machine Learning at the Push of a Button

Automated Tool Generates ML Code for IoT Devices

by Jim Turley

March 2, 2020

“Physician, heal thyself” – Luke 4:23

My Thermos bottle keeps hot drinks hot and cold drinks cold. How does it know?

An electrical engineer would probably design a Thermos with a toggle switch (“HOT” and “COLD”), or a big temperature dial, or – if you work in Cupertino – an LCD display, touchpad, RTOS, and proprietary cable interface. Thankfully, real vacuum flasks take care … Read More → "Machine Learning at the Push of a Button"