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Recent Posts
- A head-to-head comparison of the ARM Cortex-M4 and –M0 processor cores by Jack Ganssle
- Friday Video: SoC in tiny 500mg backpack transforms cockroach into radio-controlled exploration vehicle
- Friday Video: A different kind of fab with some very, very cool machines
- Friday Video: Get the latest skinny on the IPC-2581 open interchange standard for PCB design
- Smartphones: Where PCIe has not gone before—but will. Sooner rather than later.
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Top Posts
- A head-to-head comparison of the ARM Cortex-M4 and –M0 processor cores by Jack Ganssle
- Ingenious architectural features allow ST to extract maximum performance from new microcontroller family based on ARM Cortex-M4. Cost: less than 6 bucks in 1000s
- My workbench from 1978 highlighted in EETimes as one of engineering’s messiest desks
- Friday Video (Musical Bonus): What does it take to play the Dr. Who theme song with a pair of Tesla coils, a Faraday cage, and two unlucky audience members?
- Asymmetric, dual-core NXP LPC4300 microcontrollers split tasks between ARM Cortex-M4 and -M0 cores, cost $3.75 and up
- Welcome to 3D Week: Why is 3D important? Now? The memory wall, heat, and disposable sensors
- 3D Thursday: Generation-jumping 2.5D Xilinx Virtex-7 2000T FPGA delivers 1,954,560 logic cells using 6.8 BILLION transistors (UPDATED!)
- Want a peek at a possible Qualcomm 3D IC roadmap?
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Category Archives: Firmware
Heterogeneous SoC design gets its own foundation backed by heavy hitters. Good things sure to follow
I am an unabashed advocate of heterogeneous SoC design. Have been for decades. It’s a system-level design approach that lacks the elegance and academic symmetry of homogeneous processing in exchange for a more efficient, bare-metal, hard-core approach to system design … Continue reading
Posted in ARM, EDA360, ESL, Firmware, SoC, SoC Realization, System Realization
Tagged AMD, ARM, HSA Foundation, ImaginationTechnologies, MediaTek, Moore's law, Texas Instruments
1 Comment
Freescale demonstrates first-pass Kinetis L silicon at Design West (The conference formerly known as the Embedded Systems Conference)
Two weeks ago, ARM introduced its new low-end Cortex-M0+ 32-bit processor core. At the same time, Freescale announced that it was planning on introducing a new line of Kinetis “L” low-power microcontrollers based on the ARM Cortex-M0+ processor. (See “How … Continue reading
Posted in 65nm, AMS, ARM, Cortex-M0, EDA360, Firmware, Silicon Realization, SoC, SoC Realization
Tagged Cortex-M0, Freescale, Kinetis
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Hardware/Software Codesign: Pink elephants on parade?
As part of this week’s DVCon event being held in Silicon Valley, the EDAC Emerging Companies Committee sponsored a really intense and well-attended evening panel on hardware/software codesign. The effervescent Paul McLellan moderated the panel. (If you’ve not read his book, … Continue reading
Posted in EDA360, Firmware, SoC, SoC Realization, System Realization, Virtual Prototyping
Tagged Cadence, codesign, codevelopment, EDA, hardware/software, Intel, Lockheed-Martin, Xilinx
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Infineon launches microcontroller series based on ARM Cortex-M4 core, targets industrial drives, power and energy conversion, and automation
Last month, Infineon introduced the XMC4000 series of microcontrollers based on the ARM Cortex-M4 processor core augmented with a floating-point unit. (Note: Don’t confuse the Infineon XMC4000 series with the NXP LPC4000 series of microcontrollers based on the ARM Cortex-M4 … Continue reading
Posted in ARM, Cortex-M4, EDA360, Firmware, Silicon Realization, SoC, SoC Realization
Tagged ARM, ARM Cortex-M4, Cortex-M4, Infineon, Infineon TriCore, microcontroller
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Friday Video: Multicore, ARM-powered CubeStormer II solved Rubik’s Cube puzzle in world-beating 4.762 seconds
A couple of weeks ago, I posted a video of the ARM-powered CubeStormer II, a robotic mechanism constructed from four Lego Mindstorm NXT kits, that’s purpose-built to unscramble Rubik’s Cubes in the minimum amount of time. The CubeStormer II envelops … Continue reading
Posted in Android, EDA360, Firmware, System Realization
Tagged Bluetooth, Lego, Lego Mindstorm NXT, robotics, Rubik's Cube, Samsung Galaxy
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Friday Video: Are apps just for Smartphones? Nope. Take a look at this EEVblog video of new firmware for the Agilent InfiniiVision 3000X DSO
Say “apps” and smartphones likely come to mind immediately. No wonder, since that’s how most of us interact with apps on a daily basis. As all sorts of devices get smarter and smarter, the concept of apps-driven design—fundamental to EDA360—makes … Continue reading
Posted in Apps, EDA360, Firmware, System Realization
Tagged 3000X, Agilent, EEVblog, InfiniiVision
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Have you considered the Android factor in multi-core SoC processor management?
Ryan Whitwam over at Extremetech.com has just published an interesting article comparing the system-level power-management approaches taken by the Nvidia Tegra 3 and Qualcomm Snapdragon 4 ARM-based multicore SoCs. Both of those products have been discussed here at the EDA360 … Continue reading
Posted in Android, ARM, EDA360, Firmware, Silicon Realization, SoC, SoC Realization, System Realization
Tagged Android, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Snapdragon, Tegra
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3-processor SoC for digital still cameras incorporates an ARM 1136J-S RISC processor core plus separate image and video processors
One more process node click, from 45nm to 32nm, bumped the clock rate of the Ambarella A7L SoC’s on-chip ARM 1136J-S RISC processor core to 600MHz from 528MHz. But reading the press release, I get the impression that the real … Continue reading
Posted in ARM, EDA360, Firmware, Low Power, Memory, Silicon Realization, SoC Realization, System Realization
Tagged 32nm, 45nm, Camera, DSC
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Jim Hogan coins “Jobs’ Law” and nails it to the door of System and SoC Realization
Jim “make me some money” Hogan, perhaps the most visible VC in EDA, has just published an article titled “Jobs’ Law” on the System-Level Design Community Web site where he defines Jobs’ Law (Jobs, Steve Jobs, who shakes whole industries … Continue reading
Posted in EDA360, Firmware, IP, Silicon Realization, SoC Realization, System Realization
Tagged Apple, Jim Hogan, Nvidia, Steve Jobs
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EDA360 and the brand new Hewlett-Packard 15C Limited Edition RPN pocket scientific calculator
Want to know how to get a serious calculator collector salivating? Bring back a favorite design from 1982, re-engineer the design so that the old code runs on top of an emulation layer that allows the use of a “modern” … Continue reading
Posted in Apps, ARM, EDA360, Firmware, Silicon Realization, SoC Realization, System Realization
Tagged ARM 7TDMI, Atmel, HewlettPackard, HP 15C
3 Comments
Friday Video: Boot or DIE!
Sure, we all complain about boot times. For our PCs. For our laptops. For our smartphones. For our Blu-ray players. I don’t know who gave engineers a pass on boot times, but Lenovo at least is taking a funny and … Continue reading
3D Thursday: Raspberry Pi Foundation’s $25 ARM board boots Linux using stacked DRAM
Although it’s not presented at a 3D story to the public, the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s $25 alpha board based on a 700MHz ARM 11 processor is very much 3D because there’s an SDRAM stacked on top of the processor. Why? … Continue reading
Posted in 3D, EDA360, Firmware, Linux, Memory, Packaging, Silicon Realization
Tagged Broadcom, Raspberry Pi
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Semico Report: Software design costs have eclipsed silicon design efforts
“Software design costs have eclipsed silicon design efforts and have become the largest portion of the SoC creation effort.” That’s one conclusion of a new Semico report titled “SoC Silicon and Software Design Cost Analysis: Changes in Perspective.” This report … Continue reading
Posted in EDA360, Firmware, System Realization
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Google’s planned purchase of Motorola Mobility is a pure EDA360 play: Software drives Hardware
When I told my good friend David Thon that Google’s planned purchase of smartphone maker Motorola Mobility was a pure EDA360 play, he invited me to explain. In simplest terms, EDA360 posits that software now drives hardware in the processor-centric … Continue reading
Posted in Android, Apps, EDA360, Firmware, iOS, System Realization
Tagged Android, Apple, Google, IBM, iPhone, Motorola, Motorola Mobility, Research In Motion
1 Comment
More EDA360 philosophy lessons from Agilent. What are the realities of today’s engineering economics?
My good friend Jack Ganssle knows more about good firmware design and development than anyone I know and he’s just written a short essay about Agilent’s DSO (digital sampling oscilloscope) design philosophy in his latest email newsletter, the Embedded Muse, … Continue reading
Posted in Android, ARM, EDA360, Firmware, Silicon Realization, SoC Realization, System Realization
Tagged Agilent, DSO, Infiniium
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Friday Video: Micrium announces free 45-day eval version of µC/OS-III for several processors including ARM Cortex-M3 and ARM Cortex-M4
RTOS provider Micrium just announced a new policy for the distribution of the source code for its real-time kernel µC/OS-III. The kernel is now officially “source available,” meaning that developers who wish to evaluate µC/OS-III can download its source code … Continue reading
Super Nintendo video game emulator highlights important emulation facets for EDA
An article just published by ARS Technica’s Gaming Editor Ben Kuchera on video game emulation seems an unlikely source for EDA emulation advice, but the long and detailed article is a textbook study in why accurate emulation is so important … Continue reading
Posted in Apps, EDA360, Firmware, System Realization
Tagged emulation, Nintendo, Super Nintendo
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Apps define storage task, create application-specific SSD
Eric Kao, Chairperson and CEO of MemoRight, spoke at the Flash Memory Summit today with a somewhat unusual keynote for this normally hardware-fixated audience. He suggested that the industry exploit the inherent parallelism inside of solid-state drives (SSDs) by writing … Continue reading
Flashing flash’s Flash updates flash’s apps
Just how far can this apps thing go? Well the Nissin Di866 camera flash contains a USB port and Flash memory to allow its firmware to be updated. Why would you want to do that? To update the flash for … Continue reading
Is “app crashes” headline news? It is when it’s driving a car from Google
Jalopnik.com reported over the weekend that one of Google’s self-driving cars was involved in a fender bender near the company’s Mountain View headquarters last week. The article includes a photo of the Google self-driving Toyota Prius stopped behind another Prius … Continue reading
Posted in EDA360, Firmware, System Realization
Tagged autonomous vehicle, Driverless car, General Motors, GM, Google, Toyota Prius
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Qualcomm renames existing ARM-based Snapdragon mobile application processors and provides future roadmap
Several articles on the Web today are discussing some new name changes to the Qualcomm line of Snapdragon mobile application processors to clarify the differences in the choices and to show a bit of the family’s future roadmap. Qualcomm now … Continue reading
Posted in ARM, EDA360, Firmware, SoC Realization, System Realization
Tagged Application Processor, Krait, mobile, Qualcomm, Scorpion, Snapdragon
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What are the rewards for late hardware/software integration? How about a large digital thermometer sign that says the outdoor temperature is 505 degrees Fahrenheit?
How about a disk drive that reports a negative amount of free disk space? Better yet, how about a launch vehicle that fails and requires triggering of a self-destruct sequence with a really expensive satellite on board? This is the … Continue reading
Posted in EDA360, Firmware, System Realization
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Brian Bailey asks if hardware/software co-design is a myth or reality, then answers the question
Brian Bailey is a well-known consultant in the EDA industry and he’s just published a short but pithy blog on EETimes examining the state of the art in hardware/software co-design. Bailey does something I really admire in this blog. He … Continue reading
Posted in EDA360, Firmware, System Realization
Tagged Brian Bailey, co-design, codesign, hardware/software co-design
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Friday Video: Exclusive iOS 5 preview from Apple and master magician Simon Pierro
Android, Honeycomb, and Ice Cream Sandwich will have to grow a lot to match these iOS 5 features, as demonstrated by master magician Simon Pierro.
Posted in Android, EDA360, Firmware, Honeycomb, Ice Cream Sandwich, iOS, iPad
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