Racing Electronics
One of the perks of writing about electronics is that you get to see some really cool stuff. And while motor racing is not at the top of my list of enthusiasms, an invitation by Freescale to visit the McLaren Technology Centre was just too good to pass up. Besides which, it turned my fellow hacks on EE Journal green with envy: there are some real petrol heads, including a race driver and a Formula 1 Fanatic.
The reason for the invitation is that Freescale’s processors are the intelligence in the engine control units (ECU) that McLaren supplies, on an exclusive basis, to the IndyCar, NASCAR and Formula 1 (F1) racing series.
Power When You Need It
Aldec Harnesses Massive Server Capacity
Warning! We are going to say the “C” word in this article. If you can’t take it, just stop reading now and save yourself a lot of heartache and grief. We know a lot of you are sensitive on this topic and have deep-rooted emotional issues about it. Our advice is to seek professional counseling.
For those of you who are less delicate (we assume you’re still reading), we proudly present a system that has the potential to accelerate your design verification efforts beyond anything you could currently achieve. You know how it goes. You do your initial debugging just fine with your local copy of your favorite HDL simulator, but then you reach a point in your project where you need to crank some serious vectors through that bad boy. That’s when it gets tricky.
Solving the Big Secret
Synopsys Attacks SEUs in FPGAs
A few years ago, one FPGA vendor, Actel, was quietly shouting in the corner. “Hey! Single event upsets (SEUs) are a big problem for FPGAs!”
The other FPGA companies replied with a thoughtful technical analysis of the situation: “Hey, Actel - SHUT UP!”
OK, maybe that’s not exactly the way it went down, but the idea is basically right. You see, Actel’s history is in super-high-reliability FPGAs for use in space. Up in space, there are lots of tiny particles flying around with a lot of energy. When one of those particles hits a vulnerable part of an IC (like a storage element of some kind), it can flip the bit from one to zero or zero to one. As your razor-sharp digital design mind might be telling you right now, this is really bad.
Back Seat Driving Innovation
MOST, Nvidia, Spansion, and Other Stories
Modern automobiles are miracles of engineering refinement. Probably no other technology-related product calls from as many disciplines, has endured the same level of long-term evolution, has been actively used by more people, and has seen such steady long-term progress in capability, safety, and efficiency as your average family car. Each year, car companies take mountains of data and user feedback and pipe it into their engineering process, which results in an evolved, improved, safer product - most of the time, anyway.
Smart Meters and Dumb Users
Silicon Labs’ New 8051 Chips May Run Afoul of Luddites
When I was a kid, the garbage men would come into our backyard. Every week they’d park the big truck out front, hop down from the cab, let themselves in through the side gate, and walk around back to where our round metal garbage can waited on the porch outside the kitchen door. One burly man would hoist the can onto his shoulder; if we filled two cans that week, they’d both carry one. They’d retrace their steps, dump everything into the back of their big truck and make a final round trip to replace the empty can(s) on our back porch.
And Tomorrow, the World
ISO 26262 and the Future of the Automotive Business
There is a new international standard, and the world of automotive electronics must now change irreversibly. ISO 26262 was published a couple of weeks ago, and this means there is now a standard that covers “Road Vehicles – Functional Safety.” To quote from the standard:
ISO 26262 is the adaptation of IEC 61508 to comply with needs specific to the application sector of E/E [Electrical/Electronic] systems within road vehicles.
IP of Providence
Altera Boosts Video Analytics
The age of intelligent video is upon us. We’ve all played with the new Kinect devices from Microsoft. We’ve read about lane departure and collision avoidance systems being integrated into cars. We’ve heard about technologies like facial recognition being used in security applications. No longer are we content to stream “dumb” video from place to place. While the master control room with giant arrays of video feeds may make a compelling image for science fiction, the reality will be more like a giant array of cameras - and a very small number of monitors - showing us only the things that actually deserve our attention.
Lessons from Fukushima
In August a group of experts on risk, safety engineering, and related matters looked at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station disaster to see what broader lessons could be learned. Before we start reviewing some of the broader topics that arose in the workshop, please look at the exam paper below.
Examination: Safety and Systems
Your exam starts now. Please answer all the questions in this paper in a way that will satisfy any party with any interest, legitimate or otherwise, and that, in ten years, twenty years or fifty years, will not leave room for you to be blamed if your answer subsequently proves to be wrong. Remember, people’s lives and property will depend on your answer.
Nuts and Bolts
From Microcontrollers to Open Source
In this week's embedded design themed Fish Fry, I interview Alf Bogen (Co-inventor of the AVR Microcontroller - CMO at Atmel) about what helped initiate the original development of the AVR core and how it fits into the grand scheme of electronic design today.
All You Can Eat: A Bountiful Buffet of EE
Ivo Bolsens Talks Programmable Platforms, Kilopass v. Sidense, and The World's Smallest Motor
In this week's Fish Fry, I've got a bountiful buffet of EE beauty for you to sink your teeth into. I interview Ivo Bolsens (CTO and Senior Vice President - Xiinx) about the changing nature of FPGA design wins and why Xilinx is banking on its Zynq platform to transform the industry as we know it.
Also this week, I check in on the recent rounds of litigation between non-volatile memory IP suppliers Sidense and Kilopass and I dig into the details of the world's smallest motor.
I have a Spartan-6 LX9 Microboard to give out, but you'll have to listen to find out how to win.