Anybody who has done any bus & board system design knows the problem. Merchant boards typically have standardized pinouts (after years of haggling in standards organizations) for the backplane bus, and a group of user-defined pins for daughtercard I/O. Homegrown systems usually have a just-as-carefully defined proprietary… Read More
Author: Don Dingee
Automation for managed system-of-systems design
FPGAs for a few thousand devices more
An incredibly pervasive trend at last year’s ARM TechCon was the IoT, and I expect this year to bring even more of the same, but with a twist. Where last year was mostly focused on ultra-low power edge devices and the mbed ecosystem, this year is likely to show a better balance of ideas across all three IoT tiers. I also expect a slew of … Read More
S2C adds support for Juno ARM dev platform
We’ve had several blogs introducing the Juno ARM Development Platform as a vehicle for ARMv8-A software development. S2C has jumped in with a module connecting their FPGA-based prototyping platform to the Juno, enabling more advanced IP… Read More
There is more than C to worry about
We periodically see that “software ate the world” line – I’m pretty sure I’ve used it a couple times myself. The fact is, software doesn’t run itself; never has, never will. Somewhere there has to be an underlying computer. First it was on beads, then in gears, then in tubes.… Read More
Adding DSP hardware shrinks energy for MCU core
ARM’s Cortex-M4 processor core represented quite a breakthrough in digital signal controller technology when launched in 2010. Adding a single-cycle multiplier and SIMD instructions enabled basic DSP algorithms while retaining the low power benefits of an MCU. New technology circa 2016 – embedded programmable logic – can… Read More
Case study illustrates 171x speed up using SCE-MI
As SoC design size and complexity increases, simulation alone falls farther and farther behind, even with massive cloud farms of compute resources. Hardware acceleration of simulation is becoming a must-have for many teams, but means more than just providing emulation… Read More
Targeting Cat-NB1 instructions delivers power savings
If one wireless IoT technology fit every possible use case, we would have one specification. Many tradeoffs – battery life, mobility, indoor coverage, licensed versus unlicensed spectrum, and more – have made for many potential solutions. A heated discussion right now is over the future of LPWAN technologies, with LoRA, SIGFOX,… Read More
One line of macOS code could cap a 20-year pivot
When Steve Jobs made it clear at the 1997 Apple Worldwide Developer Conference he was taking back his company, he tossed the now famous line in his opening monologue: “Focusing is about saying no.” Approaching 20 years later, that decision still reverberates.… Read More
Of distant dreams and violent delights
Another report today of a Samsung Galaxy Note 7 catching fire, this time an allegedly refurbished unit, takes us back to the turning point in Samsung mobile phone history. It’s not the first time a defective Samsung phone – or a pile of thousands of them – has been on fire.
Samsung Chairman Lee Kun-Hee issued a powerful edict to his mobile… Read More
SiFive execs share ideas on their RISC-V strategy
Since its formation just last year, SiFive has been riding the RISC-V rocket from purely academic interest to first commercialization. In an exclusive discussion, I talked with CEO Stefan Dyckerhoff and VP of Product and Business Development Jack Kang about their progress so far and what may be coming next.
Previously, I covered… Read More
CHIPS Act dies because employees are fired – NIST CHIPS people are probationary