Editors' Blog

Redpine Gives Makers a “Future-Proof” IoT Platform

Internet of Things (IoT) platforms have been a thing since we started talking about the IoT way back with our coverage of Ayla Networks. The idea is to provide all the pieces necessary for assembling an IoT application.

Problem is, “platform” is an incredibly overloaded term. In our context, it can mean an offering that includes everything you need, or it can mean a framework for interconnecting pieces (pieces not necessarily included). It may even refer only to a portion of … Read More → "Redpine Gives Makers a “Future-Proof” IoT Platform"

We are doomed

by Jim Turley

I’ve written before on Future Horizon’s regular reviews of the state of the semiconductor industry. (The four horsemen). Malcolm Penn, the firm’s founder and CEO, is normally fairly up-beat, but yesterday he was wearing black. Given the state of the world economy he sees the market for semiconductor sales as essentially flat in dollars. Given that unit shipments are maintaining their 29 years of 10% annual growth, the average selling price (ASP) is falling, again another long term trend. The result is that chip companies are going … Read More → "We are doomed"

Bashing Bugs on SoCs

by Jim Turley

UltraSoC, the SOC debug company I wrote about a few weeks ago www.eejournal.com/archives/articles/20150728-ultrasoc/ is being pretty imaginative in their marketing. Today, they have launched a new whitepaper, Performance Monitoring Using UltraSoC by drawing attention to Apple’s delay in launching watchOS 2. All that is generally known is that the delay was caused “by a bug” which most news channels have assumed was purely a software issue. UltraSoc is speculating that it might have been something within the SoC … Read More → "Bashing Bugs on SoCs"

Single-Radio Zigbee and Thread

by Kevin Morris

Earlier this year we saw that Zigbee and Thread were collaborating to implement Zigbee profiles or “clusters,” which normally appear at the top of a Zigbee stack, over the Thread stack as well.

Strategically, this allows top-level Zigbee to handle IP-based data, since Thread includes 6LoWPAN, an IPv6 adaptation for running over 802.15.4, the radio protocol used by Zigbee. Much of the world operates with IP on layer 3; this allows Zigbee infrastructure to participate.

That’s at the top of … Read More → "Single-Radio Zigbee and Thread"

Designing Irregular Light

by Kevin Morris

Synopsys recently announced their latest update to their LightTools optical design suite, which we’ve looked at before. The… um… focus (sorry) of this release appears to be on irregular light patterns and behavior.

Any of us who dissected a flashlight as a kid likely understands that the light beam is … Read More → "Designing Irregular Light"

The Internet of Lightbulbs

by Jim Turley

Based on a solution just announced by CSR (now part of Qualcomm), you can outfit your new building with lights – and your network will be in place.

OK, they’re not positioning it to replace your Ethernet plant, perhaps, but it could become part of the network. They do this by making each LED lightbulb fixture also a Bluetooth mesh node. In case you missed the Read More → "The Internet of Lightbulbs"

Nanoimprint for Photonics

by Jim Turley

EVG_SmartNIL_Full_Area_UV_Nanoimprint_Lithography_Wafer_red.jpg We’ve talked about photonics before and we’ve talked about nanoimprint lithography (NIL) before. Creating silicon photonics features requires masking, which requires lithography, and so it might not be … Read More → "Nanoimprint for Photonics"

What’s in an IoT Name? And Who Goes First?

by Larra Morris

At Imec’s ITF a couple months ago, the Internet of Things (IoT) loomed large, as it has a tendency to do everywhere. Seems to be the great unifying force, the collective raison d’être for us all.

But they had a different spin: the “intuitive” internet of things. It seems that everyone is trying to carve out their own version of the IoT, which is easily done with … Read More → "What’s in an IoT Name? And Who Goes First?"

Blue-Collar Sensors from Microchip

by Kevin Morris

In our coverage of sensors, we’ve seen increasing levels of abstraction as microcontrollers in or near the sensors handle the hard labor of extracting high-level information from low-level info. These are the hipster sensors that go on the wearables that go on your person for a month and then go on your nightstand.

Today, however, we’re going to get grittier and more obscure. Some sensors have more of a blue-collar feel to them, and I discussed two examples with Microchip back at Sensors Expo.

The first is a current sensor. Specifically, … Read More → "Blue-Collar Sensors from Microchip"

Fear and Trepidation at Intel

by Kevin Morris

You may be aware that Intel went through a layoff recently. Whatever you think of the merits of the layoff itself, it would be hard to argue that it was executed smoothly. But, to hear some tell it, the result has left something of a crater in the morale and confidence of at least some of the surviving workforce. And this is a group that has seen many layoffs in the past. So … Read More → "Fear and Trepidation at Intel"