Obsolescence is a familiar and friendly concept to engineers.  In fact, it is our job.  We are professional creators of obsolescence.  Each day, we go to work with the goal of making some previous work of engineering obsolete.  Our revised rodent retention device must surpass, supersede and exceed all previous versions, else we have failed.

Audio Cassettes – gone.  Rotary-dial telephones – expurgated, and not a moment too soon.  Typewriters, cathode ray tubes, mimeograph machines – all banished to the backwaters of vintage-retro curiosity by our hard-working, innovation-happy profession.  

Occasionally, however, … Read More → "The Death of the Trade Press"

We’ve all experienced it.  

The SPDIF output on device A doesn’t match with the analog line inputs on pre-amp B, which don’t synchronize with the VGA-to-composite-to-component de-interlacing, re-sampling, trans-formatter box connected to the monitor from the output device, which now really wants HDMI from your 1968 turntable.  The problem of non-standard, proprietary, incompatible, poor-performing interfaces has dogged audio-visual equipment for decades, and most of us have a giant rat’s nest of cabling tucked behind some piece of furniture in our house to prove it.

In the modern era, when … Read More → "AV Done Right. Finally."

Flexible, powerful, and misunderstood, FPGAs are an admittedly enigmatic technology. Like the proverbial elephant amidst the blind men, the topic of FPGAs can produce a different view from every perspective – technology, applications, design tools, business… Sit down with a non-peer to have a conversation about FPGAs and you may end up wishing you were discussing something a little less controversial – like healthcare in the United States, perhaps.

Because of their inherent flexibility, FPGAs address a wide variety of problems in a number of different markets and application areas.  In each of those areas, each FPGA vendor … Read More → "Your Boss’s Birthday Present"