The rack of heavy-iron blade servers whirrs away, dishing up data and mashing myriad algorithms for hundreds of users throughout the corporate campus.  Most of them have no awareness whatsoever of the physical location of the computing resources doing their dirty work.  Day by day and week by week the blades and racks are removed, replaced, upgraded, and re-tasked.  One capacity increase is accomplished by stacking in additional blades, the next by replacing an outdated rack with a new, smaller one with fewer blades and vastly more processing power.

Those of us who have … Read More → "From Servers to Smartphones"

Embedded Technology Journal turns a terrific two years old today.  What does this mean?  For us, two years of your loyal patronage means that we’re doing something right.  It means that we were right about you, our readers – that engineers are intelligent, worldly, interesting people who want more than a datasheet, a press release, or a marketing pitch to satisfy their curiosity about the industry in which they work.  Surviving and thriving for two years in the competitive world of publishing shows that our approach to technology journalism – chronicling the technological … Read More → "Happy Birthday"

Usually, when we attend a major conference, we run a “pre-conference” piece ahead of time – just to whet your appetite.  This time, however, we decided to try something new.  We are, after all, a new media publication.  We want to show off some more of that new-media capability by covering this year’s ARM Developers’ Conference by webcast rather than by feature articles.

The idea started simply enough – On October 2nd, we celebrate Embedded Technology Journal’s second anniversary – a landmark event to be sure (at … Read More → "Breaking New Ground"

The ring is to be worn on the pinkie, its sharp barbs meant possibly to irritate the wearer slightly – a constant reminder of its presence and its symbolic meaning.  The piece is neither presumptuous nor ornate – the original material being iron (which rusted), and most current versions being made of stainless steel for practicality.  The twelve half-circle facets cut into the top and bottom are staggered, emulating a hand-tooled look.  Every aspect of the ring’s design is meant to make it utilitarian – devoid of any aesthetic value that might move it … Read More → "Ritual Ring"

I was one of the early adopters of home theater PCs.  Before the concept was widespread, I had assembled a PC with an HDTV card, a good sound card, a home theater amplifier and a plasma monitor.  There were an incredible number of issues with the setup, but I was in it for the experimentation.  The vagaries of sound card inputs and outputs compared to what home equipment wanted, conversion from VGA to component video (this was years before HDMI), and getting resolutions that the video card could produce and that the plasma would accept all … Read More → "Simplifying Storage"

Bricks and Mortar acquisitions are simple to conceptualize.  When Ford buys a smaller car company, we assume that the other company will carry on producing basically the same products they’ve been making for years, only under the new banner.  In many cases, the product line is not even re-branded, and many customers will not even be aware of the change.  Administrative responsibilities are re-shuffled, corporate accounting reports look different, and, beyond that, everything appears to be business as usual from the outside.

Technology acquisitions, however, particularly those involving products like software or … Read More → "Expanding IP Horizons"