Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you know that FPGA-based compute acceleration is suddenly a hot topic. And, even from under the rock, you probably got the memo that Intel paid over $16B to acquire Altera a couple years back – mostly to capitalize on this “new” emerging killer app for FPGA technology. These days there is an enormous battle brewing for control … Read More → "Ye Olde FPGA Acceleration"
Xilinx scored a major win recently, with Microsoft’s Azure cloud group reportedly making a commitment to use Xilinx devices in something like half of their future Azure deployments. Until now, Azure has been solidly in the Intel PSG (Altera) camp for FPGA-based acceleration. Microsoft says that every Azure server for the past several years has been equipped with FPGAs, and, until now, those … Read More → "Xilinx Scores Azure Acceleration Win"
“Find what you love and let it kill you.” – Kinky Friedman and Harley Quinn
They came in the night with little cat feet. It was just a simple email from Microsoft:
“Download and upgrade to Windows 10 now, for free. Later, it’ll cost you 100 bucks.”
Seemed like an offer too … Read More → "Killing Me Softly with its Upgrades"
“Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.” — Jonathan Swift
What started out as an experiment has become an obsession. I wanted to see what happened to the dinosaurs.
I confess, I have (or had) two big concrete dinosaurs in my backyard. They’re awkward and massive and weigh about 200–300 pounds each. They … Read More → "Computer Vision 101"
EEJournal readers ought to be very familiar with Bitcoin by now. All of the computing fruits of semiconductor technology, including microprocessors, GPUs, FPGAs, and ultimately ASICs, have been harnessed in the frenzied search for solutions to a mathematical problem that serves as “proof of work” that entitles the bearer to Bitcoin, using the rules originally created by the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto and published in a paper … Read More → "Blockchain is not Bitcoin—Bitcoin is not Blockchain"
Intel finally succeeded in making a workable DRAM, the 1103, in 1970, and by 1972, magnetic-core memory was on its way out after a 20-year reign as the only memory of choice for mainframes and minicomputers. Compared to DRAM, core memory was slow and expensive. Access times were on the order of microseconds, and attempts to automate core-plane production met with very limited success. They remained hand-woven until the … Read More → "Did Nantero Just Slam the Coffin Lid on DRAMs?"
