We’ve looked at a couple of companies focusing on improving the performance of cell phone antennas in real time as conditions change. WiSpry (MEMS) and Peregrine (SOS CMOS) were two such examples. But Cavendish Kinetics came into the picture as well, and it turns out that there’s another layer of nuance as to what these … Read More → "Two Ways to Tune an Antenna"
We all know that if we want to be able to… well… transgress someone else’s private computer and internet stuffs, there’s a subterranean culture with a dress code involving black hats where, for the right price, you can get all kinds of tools that will open up all kinds of unsavory possibilities. These are the guys our computer security systems are trying to protect us from. They’re the guys your mother warned you about.
If we keep them out of our computers, then we’re ok. Right?
< … Read More → "An Anti-Security Tool for Gray Hats"It’s not every day you get to hold a diamond whose size is on the order of inches (or cm, for those of you that require simpler math). But there it was, and when I touched it to ice, my fingers went cold in no time.
This surreal flirtation with a vaunted Girl’s Best Friend (thanks to what has to be one of the most successful marketing campaigns ever) came not as I lounged in the VIP room of some swanky event, baubles ablaze, but in the rather pedestrian setting that is the … Read More → "Are Diamonds the Coolest?"
Many years ago the British Chancellor of the Exchequer (Finance Minister) referred to financial analysts as “teenage scribblers”. And they don’t seem to have grown up. Yesterday Samsung announced that it expected profits for the second quarter of the year to be yet another record at between $8.2 and $8.5bn. That’s right – eight point five billion dollars. $1.20 for every man, woman, and child on the face of the planet in just one quarter. The company’s shares promptly fell by 2.8%. That’s right as well – record profits and the company’s … Read More → "Teenage scribblers"
Sensor fusion was the name of the game this year at Sensors Expo (especially the MIG pre-conference event). But at least two of the visible players in this space are going about it two different ways.
We’ve seen Movea moving in a direction of giving control to system designers through tools. The idea here is that a system integrator will pull sensors together and assemble custom fusion algorithms from building blocks. Key to the success of this model is the assumption that … Read More → "Sensor Fusion: DIY or Turnkey?"
This is a special one that’s going out to my home boy Jim Turley, who has a special relationship with Cloud Computing. He has a way of poking holes in one of the current darling of technology that is kind of undeniably persuasive. He makes you want to shout, as he shouts, “Testify!” even … Read More → "Embedded in the Cloud"
If you’re new to the world of motion and navigation (as I feel I still am, even after a couple of years of digging in), there are a couple words that come up a lot. And they’re usually tossed about casually in that, “If you have to ask, you’re not cool enough for the answer” kinda way. (Mostly, when I sport that attitude, it’s because I don’t really know what I’m … Read More → "Quaternion and Kalman"
No one ever got fired for using PrimeTime to sign off a chip. Actually, I don’t know if that’s true, but from an EDA buyer’s point of view, it might as well be. PrimeTime has been treated as the gold standard of accuracy. To the extent that, if you have a new tool that’s more accurate than PrimeTime, then it’s wrong. Why? Because PrimeTime says so.
And most everyone has backed down from that challenge. After all, if you’re going to displace the thing against … Read More → "Challenging PrimeTime. Really."
In the shadow of the recent Embedded Vision Alliance summit, Synopsys tossed its hat into the vision ring with their new Embedded Vision Development System. While it doesn’t appear to break any new ground in terms of tools or things that didn’t exist before, it does assemble into one place a variety of components that an aspiring embedded vision architect/designer might need.
One of the underlying assumptions is that, in order to meet the performance and cost requirements of embedded vision, which holds promise for much consumer gadgetry, an application-specific instruction-set processor ( … Read More → "Synopsys’s Embedded Vision"
The concept of oil and water separating sounds like an easy way to describe what happens with directed self-assembly. But unfortunately, it’s not quite that simple. All those lines you see so neatly laid out in the microphotographs? That’s not how it always works.
The thing is, oil and water molecules aren’t connected; they’re separate so they can go their separate ways. With diblock copolymers, the two constituents are like oil and water in that they don’t … Read More → "Self-Assembly Shapes"
