Articles – Page 4

New PSoC Brains for Motor and Power Applications

October 10, 2024

I’ve often been moved to say that I don’t have many regrets in my life. I even used to believe this myself, right up until I read The Midnight Library by Matt Haig. Now I’m discovering regrets I never even knew I had. Although this may not appear to be a ringing endorsement, I’m actually a huge fan of this book. The fact that it has a 4.3 out of 5-stars with over a quarter of a … Read More → "New PSoC Brains for Motor and Power Applications"

Unobtainium is where you find it: What happens when you can’t source an old IC?

by Steven Leibson

October 9, 2024

If you’ve designed electronic systems for a while, or if you’ve repaired vintage electronic equipment, no doubt you’ve run into the fascinating term “unobtainium.” Here’s Wikipedia’s definition of the term:

“Unobtainium originally referred to materials that do not exist at all, but can also be used to describe real materials that are unavailable due to extreme rarity or cost.”

Wikipedia lists a few examples, including parts for old cars made before the 1960s, parts for reel-to-reel tape recorders, and rare vacuum tubes that haven’ … Read More → "Unobtainium is where you find it: What happens when you can’t source an old IC?"

Adiuvo Engineering’s Leonidas Spartan 7 Tile makes it easy for you to drop an FPGA into your design

by Steven Leibson

October 7, 2024

By the time you read this article, you should be able to get Adiuvo Engineering’s new Leonidas Spartan 7 Tile. It went on sale for pre-order in August for £150.00. Unlike FPGA development boards, Adiuvo’s Leonidas Spartan 7 Tile is designed to be used as a component in a larger design. The 59x59mm tile is a circuit board with a periphery of castellated interconnect pads that will take 0.1-inch headers or will just solder down onto a larger PCB without the headers.

< … Read More →

Have You Forgotten Anything?

by Max Maxfield

October 3, 2024

I just had an interesting video conference call. It started off as so many things do… with people laughing at me (I live for the day when people laugh *with* me rather than *at* me). First, there was the fact that my name invariably comes up as “Max the Magnificent” in conference applications like Zoom and Teams. I can no longer recall how this came to be, and I have no idea how to change it, so there we are.

On the other hand, now I come to think about it, why … Read More → "Have You Forgotten Anything?"

Jim Handy, The Memory Guy, steps in with a report on CXL’s near-term future

by Steven Leibson

October 2, 2024

Back in May, I discussed CXL and gave some reasons that I thought would lead to its success. (See “The Adventures of CXL Across the 3rd Dimension.”) In that article, I mentioned that my friend Jim Handy, “The Memory Guy,” was writing a report about CXL and applying his own analysis skills to the topic. Well, the report is finally finished. It’s titled “CXL Looks for the Perfect Home,” and Handy has a lot to say about CXL in the report’s 60 … Read More → "Jim Handy, The Memory Guy, steps in with a report on CXL’s near-term future"

Eeek! GenAI-Powered Design and Verification EDA Tools

by Max Maxfield

October 1, 2024

I just got off a video conference call with a company I cannot name that’s developed a technology I cannot discuss to power a product I am forbidden to talk about at this time. But I fear I’ve said too much. Suffice it to say that this product is going to enable a new generation of high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) platforms in data centers.

But that’s not what I wanted to talk about, so I’ll say no more.

Of course, saying “I’ … Read More → "Eeek! GenAI-Powered Design and Verification EDA Tools"

TI’s new controller IC for its Digital Light Processors makes gaming projectors better

by Steven Leibson

September 30, 2024

The first time that I saw the Texas Instruments (TI) micromirror-based Digital Light Processor (DLP) in action was during the late 1980s when I visited the company’s headquarters in Texas. Back then, the company had incorporated DLP into a thermal ticket printer for airline ticketing. It would be another ten years before another company, Digital Projection Ltd, would introduce a video projector based on TI’s DLP technology. The following year, 1998, Digital Projection and TI would win an Emmy award from the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences for Outstanding Achievement in Engineering Development, for … Read More → "TI’s new controller IC for its Digital Light Processors makes gaming projectors better"

5G AI-Enabled SBCs for Everyone and Everything

by Max Maxfield

September 26, 2024

I used to be young and foolish. I’m not young anymore, but that’s not what I wanted to talk about. What I wanted to say is that I’m constantly amazed by how far and fast technology has evolved in my own lifetime. Take single board computers (SBCs) for example (cue “travelling back in time” audio and visual effects…)

I remember the first time I saw an SBC, circa the mid-to-late-1970s. It was advertised in the British Practical Electronics</ … Read More → "5G AI-Enabled SBCs for Everyone and Everything"

ChatGPT 4o writes an EEJournal Article about FPGAs

by Steven Leibson

September 23, 2024

Jeff King, creator of the popular “Den of Tools” YouTube channel, recently made a hilarious video titled “AI Judges Your Choice In Power Tools!.” In this video, King asks OpenAI’s ChatGPT 4o Mini to describe people who use Bauer, Craftsman, DeWalt, Hercules, Festool, Milwaukee, and Porter Cable power tools. The results were quite amusing, and it occurred to me that I can do the same for EEJournal as a follow-up to my previous article on the topic, “Read More → "ChatGPT 4o writes an EEJournal Article about FPGAs"

Enabling Voice Control in EVERYTHING

by Max Maxfield

September 19, 2024

Since the pernicious punctuation police (those who worship the gods of SEO) persist in prescribing that I can no longer terminate the titles to my columns with my old friend, the exclamation mark, I’m forced to become evermore inventive, like shouting “EVERYTHING” (I’m sorry).

As an aside, whilst writing this column, I started to wonder as to the history and origin of the exclamation mark, so I had a quick Google while no one was looking and I found the following on the Read More → "Enabling Voice Control in EVERYTHING"