Archives: Articles
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Flexible, Transparent Silicon?
When you think of silicon, what characteristics come to mind? Soft and pliable? Or hard and edgy? Well, your basic silicon chip isn’t something you’d…
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X-Verification Methodology for Both Designers and Verification Engineers
The propagation of unknown (X) states has become a more urgent issue with the move toward billion-gate SoC designs. The sheer complexity and the common…
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We Need Some Steenking Badges!
As first-world problems go, losing your car keys is a bad one. Losing a whole warehouse full of shippable merchandise is probably worse, but warehouses…
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Are FPGAs Dead?
I am an intense follower of technological trends. But, I can’t tell you when the 8-track tape died – probably not even within a decade.…
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Haptics: Once More, With Feeling
I did a lot of typing in college. Even as an engineering student, I still had to take humanities courses, which meant writing papers. And,…
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“Someone’s Got to be Summonsed”
In Britain a four-year-old boy was allowed to starve to death, and his body wasn’t found for two years. After his mother was sentenced to…
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Cars, Coding, and Carelessness
You’ve probably heard by now about the lawsuit against Toyota regarding its electronic engine control. The jury found the automaker guilty of writing fatally sloppy…
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Altium Bends Over Backward
The headline new feature for Altium’s newly released Altium Designer 14 (AD 14) is “Rigid-Flex Support.” True, rigid-flex is there, and it’s cool, but the…
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A Happier Muse
Many of the arts and skills developed throughout the ages have credited much of their inspiration to muses and patron saints and gods and spirits.…
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Smart Energy Getting Smarter
It’s time to take another look at the grid, yet another part of our world that is supposed to be getting smarter. And, for this…