If you had all the time in the world, you could simulate an entire SoC using SPICE, but you don’t, so you can’t. At least not for digital circuits; analog is different, since detailed analysis is required there, and it’s not a billion transistors. And yet, even with digital, we can’t quite revert all the way to 1s and 0s, but we can start to use some abstraction in the form of library cells for basic circuit chunks like transistors, inverters, gates, and flip-flops. Those cells can be characterized using SPICE ( … Read More → "Uncanny Resemblances"

If you were able to record the development of a town as it grew into a city over years and decades and then speed up the film in a super-fast-mo replay, you’d notice, assuming you weren’t thrown into an epileptic seizure by the rapid day/night flashing, that things start in a small center and move out for a while. Farmlands are replaced by tract homes, forests are cut down, hills may be leveled or developed, and the town inexorably creeps outward like mold in a Petri dish.

At some point, a limit … Read More → "Getting Around Limits By Getting High"

Some time back we took a brief look at MRAM technology, mostly from the standpoint of contrasting it with FRAMs, triggered by a specific paper regarding an MRAM-based flip-flop. That was a somewhat unusual implementation of the MRAM concept that happened to provide a quick technology contrast but didn’t really get to the heart of what’s going on with MRAMs. So we’re going to dive deeper here in the hopes that spin technology ends up meaning more than technology that causes my head to … Read More → "Entering the Spin Zone"

Those of you familiar with San Francisco may have traveled a beautiful seaside stretch of road called the Great Highway, which runs from Ocean Beach down to the zoo. The portion south of Golden Gate Park is less traveled and passes through sparsely vegetated dunes with no intersecting roads. However, even though the road is isolated from the Sunset District’s vehicular traffic, the beach is made accessible to local pedestrians via a series of crosswalks protected by stoplights.

Coursing down this way at 2 in the morning, you’ve got a good chance of being … Read More → "Take as Much Time as You Need"