Category Archives: semiconductors

Weightless Weighs In

Posted on March 30, 2013 by John Donovan

Now that PCs are old news and seemingly everyone on earth has a cell phone, the Next Big Thing promises to be machine-to-machine (M2M) communication, giving rise to the Internet of Things (IoT)—presumably a parallel universe to the Internet of … Continue reading →

Posted in ARM, RF/Wireless, semiconductors, Spectrum, Wireless | Leave a comment

The Power Wall: Are we scaling it or is it just getting higher?

Posted on October 30, 2012 by John Donovan

Cadence hosted a Low-Power Summit this month at which Jan Rabaey was the keynote speaker. Jan is the Donald O. Pederson  Distinguished Professor in the EECS department at U.C. Berkeley; Scientific Co-Director of the Berkeley Wireless Research Center (BWRC); and … Continue reading →

Posted in Cloud computing, Low-power design, semiconductors | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Dual Core AMP for Embedded MCU Applications

Posted on May 9, 2012 by John Donovan

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 →

Posted in ARM, semiconductors | Tagged , | 1 Comment

802.11 to the nth Degree

Posted on January 26, 2012 by John Donovan

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 →

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Hands On: Evaluation Kit Eases Lighting Design Starts

Posted on October 28, 2011 by John Donovan

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 →

Posted in Lighting, Microcontrollers, semiconductors | Tagged | Leave a comment

SiliconBlue Rolls Out 40-nm Low-Power FPGAs

Posted on July 12, 2011 by John Donovan

To date winning a cell phone socket has been a bridge too far for FPGA vendors. Xilinx’s CoolRunner CPLDs have been successful there by adding glue logic, but FPGAs have long been too bulky, expensive, and power hungry to get … Continue reading →

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Otellini and Perlmutter Kick off IDF

Posted on September 14, 2010 by John Donovan

Paul Otellini kicked off this year’s Intel Developer’s Forum (IDF) declaring, “Intel used to be a chip company…now we’re becoming a solutions provider.” Intel’s just the latest semicon firm to be forced to move up the food chain, offering more … Continue reading →

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Ultra Low Power Electronics in the Next Decade

Posted on August 19, 2010 by John Donovan

As a TI Fellow and director of TI’s Kilby Research Labs, Ajith Amerasekera’s job is to predict the future and plot a roadmap to it. His keynote at day two of the low-power electronics show (ISLPED) in Austin—“Ultra Low Power … Continue reading →

Posted in Batteries, Clean energy, Energy Efficiency, Power management, semiconductors | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Out of a Job? Create One!

Posted on September 9, 2009 by John Donovan

Despite all of the hullabaloo about health care reform, I propose that the number one problem we’re facing right now is jobs—rather, the lack of them. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the unemployment rate in August was 9.7 … Continue reading →

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What’s In a Chip? Reverse Engineer It to Find Out

Posted on July 29, 2009 by John Donovan

I had an interesting meeting today at DAC with Julia Elvidge, the president of Chipworks. Chipworks basically reverse engineers chips to find out exactly what makes them tick. The results may surprise you—they certainly did me. I must admit I’ve … Continue reading →

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