Articles – Page 531

November 25, 2008

Altera has carved a unique niche in the market with their HardCopy ASIC offering. As we all know, FPGAs offer some compelling benefits when compared with traditional ASICs – short design cycles, zero-NRE, and in-field re-programmability are the ones most often cited. For low- to medium-volume applications, FPGAs can be a wise choice compared with a high-risk, high-NRE, low-volume ASIC run.

FPGAs are not a panacea, however. Low-cost FPGAs don’t have the speed, capacity, or rich feature set of their high-end brethren. If you need advanced capabilities, you’ll pay an advanced price, … Read More → "HardCopy in Practice"

Entering the Spin Zone

A Closer Look at MRAMs

by Bryon Moyer

November 25, 2008

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"

Hooking Up

Choices of Interconnect in Embedded, New and Old

by Bryon Moyer

November 18, 2008

The number of options for getting from point A to point B keeps growing. It’s one of those areas where the concept of “standard” is somewhat loose, since there are so many of them you might wonder if the word even applies. Connectivity in larger embedded systems historically took advantage of backplane standards that allowed different cards to communicate with each other; smaller form factor devices often didn’t need the kind of data transfer rates that would warrant a complex protocol.

As miniaturization has shrunk erstwhile cabinets into our palms, the … Read More → "Hooking Up"

Take as Much Time as You Need

by Bryon Moyer

November 18, 2008

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"

Who’s Winning?

Early Returns in the FPGA Races

by Kevin Morris

November 11, 2008

Let’s face it, we’re a competitive species. People like to compete in just about everything they do. We’re not psychologists, so we can’t speculate with much authority on the Ids and Egos that drive our drives to win, but we can certainly see the results – in everything from our obsession with sports to our capitalist system of business.

An important by-product of our competitive nature is our attention to score keeping. We constantly strive to establish metrics by which we measure our progress and success & … Read More → "Who’s Winning?"

Rooting Out Software Heresy

by Dick Selwood

November 11, 2008

For those of you who don’t regularly visit the comments at http://www.journalforums.com/ (and you should), my piece two weeks ago on “Taming C?” generated a number of comments. These got me thinking. The outcome of these thoughts seemed sufficiently relevant to all regular readers of ETJ that it was worth writing a full-length article rather than just posting replies.

The article started, “There is a problem with the C programming language.” It went on to argue that … Read More → "Rooting Out Software Heresy"

Battered and Bedraggled

Cadence Does a Management Restart

by Bryon Moyer

November 11, 2008

These are interesting times at Cadence. A bit too interesting. If you read some of the press blips over the last few weeks, it’s over; investors have given up; time to fold the tent and go home.

Wha? How could a solid EDA denizen find itself in such a position? And is it really over? Or is the press exaggerating? (Although really, since when does the press exaggerate?)

OK, granted, the stock price is at around 1994 levels (adjusted for splits). I’m not one to follow the financials as much as the … Read More → "Battered and Bedraggled"

Tiny Tiny Chips

Actel Launches nano FPGAs

by Kevin Morris

November 4, 2008

What do you get when you multiply a normal FPGA by .000000001? Well, those of you that have been reading this publication for awhile may jump right in with the observation that this is a floating-point operation, and since FPGA math would normally need to be fixed-point, we will have to “quantize” before we get started. Fair enough.

As you also probably know, quantization is the process of approximating a vast range of continuous values by a comparatively small set of discrete ones. We choose the range of values we’re … Read More → "Tiny Tiny Chips"

Making More of a Contribution

Increasing Embedded’s Influence on Linux

by Bryon Moyer

November 4, 2008

Peer review is a well-established essential component of the scientific process. For good science, anyway. The system provides a way for new ideas to be vetted and tested rather than being foisted immediately on a public that is all too willing to accept at face value the pronouncements of anyone calling him- or herself a scientist.

The same idea, albeit with somewhat different aims, plays a part in the open source world, where code gets posted and reviewed by peers in order to ensure that the code actually does what is claimed, has no bugs, is well … Read More → "Making More of a Contribution"

Spicing Up Simulation

Infinisim and Gemini Enter the Analog Fray

by Bryon Moyer

November 4, 2008

In yet another example of the ascendance of analog considerations, simulation of analog behavior – whether in outright analog circuits or in the secret analog life of digital circuits – has risen to the level of problem that needs solving. SPICE is the mother’s milk of analog simulation, but, in the spirit of actually getting things done in a finite amount of time, SPICE has been divided into the “Fast SPICE” side of things, where you trade off some accuracy for the ability to see results sooner, and full SPICE, which takes longer to run … Read More → "Spicing Up Simulation"