Merchant microcontrollers are usually made available in a wide range of variants based on one architecture with different peripheral payloads and packaging options. A couple of companies, notably Cypress with their PSoC families and Silicon Labs with the EFM8 Laser Bee… Read More
Tag: microcontroller
CEO Interview: Geoff Tate of Flex Logix
This is the second in series of interviews we will do with executives inside the fabless semiconductor ecosystem. Geoff Tate was the founding CEO of Rambus and is now CEO and co-founder of Flex Logix (embedded FPGA). This one should be of great interest due to the recent $16.7B acquisition of Altera by Intel. We all now know the importance… Read More
Pushing automotive-grade embedded flash to 28nm
18 months ago Renesas announced they were prototyping their SG-MONOS eFlash on 28nm, and at the time we said it would be a couple of years before actual product. Yesterday, Renesas revealed their partner in this effort is TSMC – no surprise – and hinted things are moving, with better performance than expected but on a longer qualification… Read More
BLDC motor control kit targets power savings
We tend to focus on connectivity and sensors for the IoT, however there is a third element to what I call the “Edge Device Triad” that is just as important: actuators. Making things move with microcontrollers (MCUs) is a science in and of itself. For small size and low weight combined with decent mechanical power, designers are opting… Read More
tinyAVR in 8 and 14 pin SOIC now self-programming
At this week’s Embedded World 2016, Atmel is heading back to 8-bit old school with their news, straight to the low pin count end of their MCU portfolio with a significant upgrade to the tinyAVR family.
According to Atmel’s briefing package, development of the ATtiny102 and ATtiny104 has been in progress for some time.… Read More
How Makers are changing the world—and why I’m so excited about it
I’ve spent my entire career in the tech space, being exposed to some of the world’s biggest and most innovative companies. But these days, the thing that excites me a most is how Makers are using technology to make the world a better place.
Consider this: The recent Hackaday prize challenged Makers to build something that matters … Read More
mbed OS abstraction battles IoT hyperfragmentation
In the days of bit banging and single-threaded loops, programming a microcontroller meant grabbing a C compiler (or even before that, an assembler) and some libraries and writing bare metal code. High performance networking and multi-tasking was usually the purview of heavier real-time operating systems (RTOS) or, if an MMU… Read More
Automotive MCU code fault-busting with vHIL
With electronic and software content in vehicles skyrocketing, and the expectations for flawless operation getting larger, the need for system-level verification continues to grow. Last month, we looked at a Synopsys methodology for virtual hardware in the loop, or vHIL… Read More
Dialog and Atmel, 2 cultures to build 1 successful company ?
Consolidation is on-going in semi industry, as we learn that Dialog Semi just announced the acquisition of Atmel. Is it a good news for Atmel, or for Dialog ? Apparently not for the stock market, as Dialog stock went down by 20% within the last few hours… But we can try to look more in-depth at the potential synergy between these two companies’s… Read More
Last line of defense for IoT security
If I grab 10 technologists and ask what are the most important issues surrounding the Internet of Things today, one of the popular answers will be “security.” If I then ask them what IoT security means, I probably get 10 different answers. Encryption. Transport protocols. Authentication. Keying. Firewalls. Secure boot. Over-the-air… Read More