Just to put you out of your suspense, the tantalizing topic of this column is that a company called PulseForge has developed a technology that allows us to solder surface-mount components onto conductive inks pads and tracks which are themselves printed on thin, flexible polymer (plastic) substrates. This is quite a trick when we remember that the melting point of lead-free solder is around 227°C ± a … Read More → "Melting Metal on Plastic Without Melting the Plastic!"
Well, PCI-SIG has done it once again. They’ve doubled the peak maximum bandwidth of the PCI Express (PCIe) bus by releasing the PCIe 6.0 specifications on January 11. A 16-lane PCIe 6.0 connection has a peak bidirectional bandwidth of 256 Gbytes/sec. That’s pretty darn fast. How’d they do it? The simple answer is that they ripped a page from the high-speed Ethernet spec and adopted PAM4 … Read More → "PCI-SIG’s PCIe 6.0 Spec Continues the Long, Happy Evolution of PCI Express"
Early microprocessors straddled two major computing epochs. During the first epoch, stretching from the late 1960s through the 1970s, computer system engineers designed and implemented minicomputer processor architectures and processor boards using TTL parts, bipolar PROMs, stone knives, and bearskins. Each minicomputer maker – including Digital Equipment Corp (DEC), Data General (DG), Prime, Computer Automation, IBM, Burroughs, HP, Four-Phase, NCR, and Univac – had their own, proprietary minicomputer … Read More → "Happy 50th Birthday to the 8-bit Intel 8008 Microprocessor"
If you are anything like me, you dream of having the ability to create and automatically populate your printed circuit board (PCB) prototypes in the comfort of your own office. Well, in fact you can, because BotFactory’s SV2 combines a conductive ink printer, solder paste extruder, pick-and-place machine, and reflow bed into a single product that allows you to prototype your PCBs in a matter … Read More → "BotFactory: All-In-One PCB Printing and Assembly"
