Articles – Page 3

In Memoriam: Charlie Sporck, Former CEO of National Semiconductor

November 6, 2024

Charles (Charlie) Sporck, a former CEO of National Semiconductor, died in October. He was a true semiconductor pioneer – a contemporary of Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore – who started working at Fairchild Semiconductor as a production manager in 1959 when he knew virtually nothing about semiconductors. Sporck’s claim to fame is transforming National Semiconductor from a failing enterprise into a chip-making powerhouse and analog IC leader during the 1970s and 1980s. National was the first semiconductor company to reach $1 billion in annual sales, during Sporck’s tenure as CEO. That was in 1981. A mechanical engineer, Sporck focused on … Read More → "In Memoriam: Charlie Sporck, Former CEO of National Semiconductor"

Altera unveils slightly more detail about the Agilex 3 FPGA family a year after announcing it

by Steven Leibson

November 4, 2024

At Altera’s recent Innovators Day, the company’s CEO Sandra Rivera mostly rehashed the newly freed FPGA company’s goals and plans. She also disclosed just a little more information about the upcoming Agilex 3 FPGA family, slated to become Altera’s low-end offering in the growing Agilex FPGA family of families. In her keynote presentation, Rivera said that the Agilex 3 FPGA family would include devices with 25K to 135K logic elements, which squarely overlays the company’s aging Cyclone V FPGA family. The Agilex 3 family will therefore usher end-product designs in the Cyclone V FPGA class … Read More → "Altera unveils slightly more detail about the Agilex 3 FPGA family a year after announcing it"

Arrggghhh! Now I Want an NI mioDAQ! (Ignore the ‘!’)

by Max Maxfield

October 31, 2024

For those who don the undergarments of authority and stride the corridors of power, pompously parading the insignia of the punctuation police and SEO security, it should be noted that the title to this column in no way ends with an exclamation mark, so there are no SEO concerns to concern you there!

Moving on… have you ever found yourself desperately wanting to own something you didn’t even know existed just a few short minutes earlier? This just happened to me. I’ll tell you about that in a moment, but first … Read More → "Arrggghhh! Now I Want an NI mioDAQ! (Ignore the ‘!’)"

What if Your Strawberries Could Talk?

by Max Maxfield

October 29, 2024

So, there I was, happily minding my own business, when my email system went “ping” and I looked up to see a message with a subject line saying, “What if Your Strawberries Could Talk? Now They Can!” Unfortunately, I was obliged to lose the “Now They Can!” part from my column title. This is because—as I’ve mentioned before—those who don the undergarments of authority and stride the corridors of power have forbidden me from terminating the titles to my columns with exclamation marks. This would leave “Now They Can” (without an exclamation mark) looking … Read More → "What if Your Strawberries Could Talk?"

Welcome to the Wild Goose Lodge, a LoRaWAN hotel where you can check in and out any time you like

by Steven Leibson

October 28, 2024

On a recent trip through Oregon, my wife and I stopped in a very small town named Merrill, which is the closest town to the Lava Beds National Monument in northern California – a must-see part of the country managed by US National Park Service. We spent the night in Merrill at a tiny motel called the Wild Goose Lodge, with 13 rooms and two larger “cabins.” … Read More →

Humanoid Robots Will Be Serving You Soon

by Max Maxfield

October 24, 2024

As I always say, if you show me a picture of a robot or an elephant, you will have my full and undivided attention. This happened to me recently when Matthew Cossel sent me a picture of a robot called ADAM serving drinks in a fast-food restaurant. This picture was accompanied by a message that essentially said: “Interested? Want to learn more?” To which I heard a little voice inside my head shouting, “YES!”

Before we proceed, I’d like to give a shout out to Matthew, who works for Read More → "Humanoid Robots Will Be Serving You Soon"

555 versus Raspberry Pi Pico: Which side are you on?

by Steven Leibson

October 21, 2024

I’ve seen a lot of engineering religious wars over the decades. Chances are, you have as well. Here’s a very partial list of some wars I’ve seen:

Motorola 6800 versus Intel 8080
Motorola 68000 versus Intel 8086
Microsoft Basic versus DEC Basic
C versus <your favorite programming language here>
Verilog Versus VHDL
AMD x86 versus Intel x86
RISC versus CISC
Arm … Read More → "555 versus Raspberry Pi Pico: Which side are you on?"

From Thought to Circuit in Record Time with AI

by Max Maxfield

October 17, 2024

Thus far, if the truth be told, I’ve had mixed experiences with large language models (LLMs) and generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) as personified by ChatGPT. I started, as many people do, by asking ChatGPT questions about things I knew nothing about, receiving responses that appeared to be reasonably impressive.

The reason for my emphasizing the word “appeared” in the previous paragraph is that I next asked questions about things I did know something about, only to discover that many of ChatGPTs responses were missing key elements or, in … Read More → "From Thought to Circuit in Record Time with AI"

Zeke and His Chums Are Poised to Chat with the ISS

by Max Maxfield

October 15, 2024

Good Grief! It’s happened again! I must have blinked, or sneezed, or… hmm… enjoyed a bodacious bowl of beans (let us say), only to find another hunky chunk of time has zipped past under my nose (no pun intended), leaving me dazed and confused in the here and now.

Just to set the scene, deep in the mist of time we used to call 1970, when I was but 13 years of age, I would be found dancing with delight if I managed to make a simple 2-transistor oscillator warble in an annoying way. … Read More → "Zeke and His Chums Are Poised to Chat with the ISS"

NIST Issues New Quantum Crypto Standards for Cyberspace

by Steven Leibson

October 14, 2024

NIST, the US National Institute of Standards and Technology, has finally published a trio of new standards for post-quantum cryptography (PQC) in an attempt to get ahead of the coming cryptography crisis that’s forecast for the time when quantum computers get powerful enough to crack current RSA (Rivest-Shamir-Adleman) public-key encryption standards. Although the RSA algorithm was published in 1977 and predates the Internet by a decade or so, today’s Internet services, including the Secure Shell (SSH), OpenPGP, S/MIME, and SSL/TLS protocols, rely on RSA for encryption and digital signature functions. Other public-key crypto standards, … Read More → "NIST Issues New Quantum Crypto Standards for Cyberspace"