Articles – Page 91

Sensors, Space Probes, and Wi-Fi Cybersecurity, Oh My!

February 27, 2020

I’m afraid that I don’t know as much about imaging sensors as I would like. I was just about to say that I don’t really come into contact with these little rascals much in my daily life, but then I realized that — in reality — I’m surrounded by the little scamps.

For example, in addition to its backwards pointing camera to aid in reversing, my car has a dual-camera assembly in the front providing binocular vision for use with lane departure detection and automatic braking in emergencies. … Read More → "Sensors, Space Probes, and Wi-Fi Cybersecurity, Oh My!"

Magnetic RAM Finds Its Niche

Everspin Stakes Out the Territory for Magnetic Nonvolatile Memories

by Jim Turley

February 25, 2020

“Persistence and endurance will make you omnipotent.” — Casey Neistat

Tiffany & Co. isn’t the biggest retailer in the world, but they seem to do okay. Same goes for Hermès, Rolls-Royce, Bertazzoni, or Princess Yachts. They’re all small boutiques that cater to a clientele with, shall we say, unique product requirements. Sure, they’re expensive. But they’re worth it.

You might even add Everspin to that list, not because they’re startlingly expensive (they’re not) but because they … Read More → "Magnetic RAM Finds Its Niche"

What Is a Cache, Anyway?

Looking at the Mysteries That Make Computers Go Faster

by Jim Turley

February 24, 2020

“If [a small business’s] cashflow dries up, the impact is fatal.” – Theo Paphitis, entrepreneur

What if FedEx replaced its delivery vans with a fleet of Ferraris? That’d be cool. They could deliver packages way faster than now. On the other hand, they’d be able to deliver only small packages; shipping a big bookcase would be a problem. Sportscars don’t have big trunks because speed, cargo capacity, mass, and a high center of gravity just don’t go together.

Silicon to Satisfy the AIoT: xcore.ai

by Max Maxfield

February 20, 2020

There’s a really interesting company called XMOS that’s based in the UK. One of the things that’s noteworthy about the folks at XMOS is that they are extremely well known in certain circles, like audio processing and speech recognition, but relatively unknown in other spheres of activity, like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). Happily, all that’s about to change with their latest chip — the xcore.ai — which I think of as silicon to satisfy the … Read More → "Silicon to Satisfy the AIoT: xcore.ai"

Upmem’s Processor-In-Memory Accelerates AI

A Different Approach to an Often-Difficult Problem

by Jim Turley

February 19, 2020

“A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.” – Steven Wright
It’s a DRAM module, right? Well, that’s only partially correct. It is a standard DIMM (dual inline memory module), but it’s also 128 microprocessors. Don’t see the sea of CPUs? That’s because they’re coming from… inside the housing! … Read More →

Loading Software on the Fly: AppStreamer

Purdue University Solves First-World Problem

by Jim Turley

February 17, 2020

“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” – George Santayana

I swear, people are trying their hardest to resurrect the 1970s. I thought the era of bell-bottom pants, 8-inch floppy disks, and bicycles with banana seats was nostalgia-proof. Yet here we are. First there was cloud computing, a throwback to the days of dumb terminals and remote time-sharing computers. Now we’ve got college-educated kids – good ones, at that – devising ways to revitalize the idea of broadcast TV and video arcades.

Ultimate Guide to Switch Debounce (Part 4)

by Max Maxfield

February 13, 2020

Previously, as they used to say at the start of a new episode in a TV series, we discussed the history behind the use of hardware vs. software to debounce our switches. We also perused and pondered the idea of using an RC network followed by a Schmitt trigger to debounce a single pole, single throw (SPST) toggle switch (see Part 3). … Read More →

Machine Learning For a Few Dollars

Eta Compute’s ECM3532 Chip Brings Inference to the Edge

by Jim Turley

February 12, 2020

“We have to be very prissy about how we tell computers to do things.” – Richard P. Feynman

Alpha, beta, gamma, delta… something, something… lambda… uh, omega. That’s about all I remember of the Greek alphabet. College was a long time ago and I never joined a fraternity.

The folks at Eta Compute stayed in school, though, and got smart. They know that … Read More → "Machine Learning For a Few Dollars"

Cache Coherent Chaos

CCIX, CXL, and More

by Kevin Morris

February 11, 2020

We are at the dawn of the biggest change in decades in our global computing infrastructure. Despite the slow death of Moore’s Law, the rate of change in our actual computer and networking systems is accelerating, with a number of discontinuous, revolutionary changes that reverberate throughout every corner of computer system architecture.

As Moore’s Law grinds to an economic halt, the rate of performance improvement of conventional von Neumann processors has slowed, giving rise to a new age of accelerators for high-demand workloads. AI in particular puts impossible … Read More → "Cache Coherent Chaos"

Is the End of Email Coming?

User-Insensitive Spam Solutions Have Hurt Reliability

by Bryon Moyer

February 10, 2020

Picture this typical quotidian activity: You reply to an email sent by a colleague in a different company. Your reply makes it clear that you’re expecting a response within a reasonable timeframe. You wait a day… or two… or a week… and there’s no reply. You finally get them by phone and find out that they never received the email.

Granted, this is a worst-case scenario. There’s a sliding scale of issues with email, with the worst of them being that it simply isn’t delivered and … Read More → "Is the End of Email Coming?"