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Author Archives: John Donovan
Trust and Verify
While system-level design has been proceeding apace for many years—approaching the goal haltingly and asymptotically—system-level verification remains the Achilles heel of that enterprise. SoC design in particular increasingly consists of assembling IP from a variety of vendors, reusing some of … Continue reading
Dual Core AMP for Embedded MCU Applications
Symmetrical dual-core processors—using two identical cores—are hardly novel, in fact they’re a bit passé by now. And asymmetrical multicore processors (AMP)—usually combining a CPU and a DSP—have also been around for many years. What’s new is an AMP MCU that combines … Continue reading
big.LITTLE is Big
Asymmetrical multiprocessing is a great idea that’s challenging to execute. It’s relatively straightforward to process high-speed, high definition video doing symmetrical multiprocessing (SMP) using an array of identical DSPs instantiated in an SoC or FPGA. However, doing asymmetrical multiprocessing (AMP) … Continue reading
Posted in ARM
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Share the Air(waves)
With seemingly everyone in the world over the age of six owning a smart phone, the FCC estimates that the demand for wireless services will continue to increase over 50% year-over-year. While the cellular network load due to voice traffic … Continue reading
Posted in Cell phones, FCC, regulation
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802.11 to the nth Degree
It seems like every major wireless protocol is coming out with a variant that can make it under the low-power limbo bar. Bluetooth has spawned Bluetooth Low Energy and ZigBee now has a low-power healthcare profile. Not to be outdone, … Continue reading
Bluetooth Goes Ultra-Low-Power
There’s hardly a cell phone on the planet that doesn’t have a Bluetooth transceiver for connecting to a wireless headset. Most new PCs now incorporate Bluetooth chips for the same purpose, letting you type while you talk or listen. Many, … Continue reading
Synopsys Buys Magma—But Will the Marriage Last?
By John Donovan Synopsys yesterday (11/30/2011) announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to buy Magma Design Automation for $507 million, the largest acquisition in the EDA industry in many years. The acquisition will strengthen Synopsys’ position in both … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
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Electric Flight—the Ultimate Energy Efficiency Challenge
If you think electric cars are impressive, how about an electric 747? On a smaller scale, that flight of fancy just became a reality. Last month in Santa Rosa, CA, an electric-powered 4-seat light plane won the NASA/Google Green Flight … Continue reading
Posted in Clean energy, Electric flight, Energy Efficiency
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Hands On: Evaluation Kit Eases Lighting Design Starts
Normally you order an evaluation kit to check out whether a particular microcontroller seems appropriate for a design you have in mind; if everything seems OK, you then order a more costly development kit to prototype your design. Cypress’ CY3267 PowerPSoC … Continue reading
Storing Volts
While electric vehicles have been around since the late 19th century, they only became practical with the development of energy storage systems that sport a lot better horsepower-to-weight ratio than bulky lead acid batteries. By the mid-90’s automakers had pretty … Continue reading
Posted in Automotive, Batteries, Clean energy
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