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Author Articles

  • Backplane Switch-Fabric ICs Go To The Next Level

    By Ray Weiss, March 18, 2002

    This is the last Special Report that Ray Weiss, who passed away on New Year's Eve, prepared for us. We will miss his insight, his expertise, and his friendship. (See our tribute to him in our February 4, 2002 issue, p....

  • Building People And Killing Bureaucracy

    By Ray Weiss, February 04, 2002

    They called him "Neutron Jack." They said he'd never tame the massive bureaucracy and turn GE into a world-class competitor. But they were wrong. Today, Jack Welch, the retired president and CEO of GE, is considered the CEO of CEOs. Now, under his 20...

  • RapidIO Gets Chip Traction

    By Ray Weiss, November 19, 2001

    RapidIO is rapidly becoming a chip reality. Chips are emerging that implement RapidIO connectivity. Also, a RapidIO serial bus implementation promises to build on the InfiniBand/Gigabit-Ethernet serial bus base. RapidIO is a lower-level...

  • 25-MHz 8051 Crams Flash, ADC, And Timers Into 9-mm2 MLP

    By Ray Weiss, November 19, 2001

    The 8051 is alive and well. Cygnal Integrated Products has crammed a 25-MHz 8051 core, 8 kbytes of flash, and 256 bytes of data RAM into a tiny 11-pin, 3- by 3-mm (9 mm2) micro-lead package (MLP). Chip peripherals include a 500-ksample/s...

  • 3GIO Named Successor To PCI/PCI-X

    By Ray Weiss, October 29, 2001

    Parallel buses are giving way to high-speed serial/pseudoserial buses, especially in I/Os and system interconnects. Buses like PCI and PCI-X, the universal PC I/O and embedded system buses, will transition to a serial bus, the 3GIO (...

  • Perform FPGA Board Field Upgrades Via The Internet

    By Ray Weiss, October 15, 2001

    The idea of field upgrades of reprogramming FPGAs is a key attraction to designers. Unfortunately, field-upgrade meth-odology has been pretty much left to the engineer. Xilinx's Pave 1.0 Framework changes that. It enables designers to reprogram...

  • InfiniBand Switch Node Delivers Eight 4X Ports

    By Ray Weiss, October 15, 2001

    InfiniBand is on its way to becoming a mainstream switch fabric. The key to implementing InfiniBand is its switch nodes, the individual nodes that make up the warp and woof of the interconnection fabric. The good news is that Red Switch is fielding...

  • Configurability Versus Extensibility

    By Ray Weiss, October 15, 2001

    Some controversy exists about just what is "configurable" and what is "extensible" for soft, synthesizable microprocessor cores. Classic definitions that seem to stand are: Configurable: adding or removing already defined resources...

  • Up SoC Performance With Configurable/Extensible Microprocessor Cores

    By Ray Weiss, October 15, 2001

    Every engineer wants a microprocessor to fit an application like a glove. But nobody wants to design a micro for a specific application. Too expensive. Too much work. But today, engineers can get a tailored microprocessor without paying the design...

  • On-Chip Debugging

    By Ray Weiss, October 01, 2001

    Bill: Today we have the hardware hooks to debug processors with on-chip memory. But it's not enough. Code size and chip clock rates have risen, so we need better on-chip debugging resources. Ray: Don't forget, it's the...

  • Hot Product

    By Ray Weiss, October 01, 2001

    Multi 2000 IDE Brings Optimizing C++ Compilers To ARM. Version 3.0 of Green Hills' Multi integrated development environment supports the ARM7, ARM9, and ARM10 processor families, along with the ARM architecture-compliant Intel XScale...

  • MIPS On-Chip Debug Hardware

    By Ray Weiss, October 01, 2001

    One of the first RISCs, the MIPS architecture has come a long way in sophistication and performance. It's a mainstream architecture licensed by MIPS Technologies to chip and FPGA vendors. MIPS made its mark as a compact, high-performance CPU in...

  • ARM On-Chip Debug Hardware

    By Ray Weiss, October 01, 2001

    ARM, one of the twenty-first century microprocessor standards, has a major presence in SoCs. A 32-bit RISC, it was designed for mid- to low-level applications. It was also designed for low-power operation. Vendors can license the ARM...

  • PowerPC On-Chip Debug Hardware Resources

    By Ray Weiss, October 01, 2001

    The PowerPC started out as a RISC challenger to the PC's XC86, developed by Apple, IBM, and Motorola. It lost that race, but it has become a major RISC for ICs, ASSPs, and cores. PowerPCs have a large embedded base in printers, telecom, control, and...

  • Debug Products

    By Ray Weiss, October 01, 2001

    USB + JTAG + DSP = Debugging Tool From Electronic Warfare Associates, the compact Blackhawk JTAG emulator plugs into a standard PC USB port. The Blackhawk draws all power through the USB connection. It handles the...

  • PICMG Working On General Switch-Fabric Board Architecture

    By Ray Weiss, September 17, 2001

    PICMG is working on a non-PCI backplane/board architecture, PICMG 3.0. It defines a board configuration designed to serve as the base for the different switch fabrics now emerging for general use—InfiniBand, StarFabric, RapidI/O, Ethernet...

  • Repeater Chip Opens Up InfiniBand Design

    By Ray Weiss, September 17, 2001

    Sometimes it's the small things that count, especially in networking. For example, in switch fabrics, implementations may need more than just the standard nodes—HCAs, TCAs, and switches. One key part is a repeater, a chip that strengthens and...

  • Bad Drives Out The Good

    By Ray Weiss, September 03, 2001

    Heard of Gresham's Law? It says that "bad money drives out the good." This applies to more arenas than finance, like management. Bad managers drive out the good ones. Once there's a tipping balance—enough bad managers to make a fatal...

  • News Clips

    By Ray Weiss, September 03, 2001

    Integrity RTOS supports MIPS32 cores (4Kc, 4Km, and 4Kp). This royalty-free RTOS is targeted at secure, ultra-reliable environments. It's supported by Green Hills' Multi IDE. Green Hills Software Inc., www.gh.com. 8-Bit...

  • System Boards

    By Ray Weiss, September 03, 2001

    PMC Module Delivers 100 Mbits/1-Gbit Ethernet Ethernet won't go away. It has become a key connection for networking and connectivity. From Cyclone Mi-crosystems, the PMC58 packs 100 Mbits and 1-Gbit Ethernet into a...