Archives: Articles
-
Cooler, Lighter, Faster
We’ve all heard that time is money. Also, given today’s energy market, we are painfully aware that power is money. By the transitive property, we…
-
When the Walls Get Too Thin
“But melord, the walls on the castle are thick, sir. There be but two ways to breach them, one being through the attaining of prodigious…
-
Does Harry Use Tools?
In England there is a phrase used to describe a significant sub-class of embedded engineers – “Fred in a shed.” It is the guy who…
-
The Big eASY
What’s bigger, faster, cheaper, and lower-power than the biggest, newest 65nm and 40nm FPGAs? ASICs, of course. OK, I can hear you already –…
-
ESL Gets a New Taker
Electronic system level (ESL) design has struggled to convince doubters that it’s more than a marketing TLA. But the most visibly productive ESL tools in…
-
Let’s Abolish All Patents
“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the (patent) lawyers.” – William Shakespeare: Henry the Sixth, Part 2, Act IV, Scene II (sort of)…
-
Complexitango
For years now, FPGA companies have been proclaiming that you can use their devices to create a “System on a Chip.” We’ve seen “SoCs,” “Programmable…
-
Complexitango
Supposing that’s true, and we want to put a “system” onto a chip. What exactly is a “system”? Wikipedia tells us a “system” is a…
-
A Non-Volatile Middle Ground
A few weeks ago we started a look at Logic Non-Volatile Memory (Logic NVM) options. These are non-volatile memories intended for embedding in SoCs using…
-
Citius, Altius, Fortius
Better, stronger, faster. Isn’t that what every new microprocessor is supposed to deliver? Hope springs eternal in the breast of many a processor-marketing drone. Their…