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Lots of PIC programmers will want to get their hands on the MPLAB ICD 3 from Microchip (see the figure). It uses the faster USB 2.0 interface to improve chip programming times by a factor of 15. The higher-speed interface also moves data to and from memory quicker, providing a snappier debugging interface. This makes operations like single stepping faster. The MPLAB...

Multimedia is already part of home-automation systems. Take, for instance, Control4’s range of products from lighting and climate control to switched audio. Wallmount LCD panels provide a convenient portal to an array of controllable options within the home (see the figure). Home-automation system installers typically handle this class of product. In the past, these systems were...

One common element between home-automation and media systems are control points. These may be panels, radio or infrared remotes, and PCs. They could also be cell phones, wireless phones, or MP3 players. Unfortunately, the universal remote doesn’t exist yet. Infrared TV remote controls are a start, but they can be a pain to program. They also need to be pointed at the appropriate device or an action will not be recognized. Moreover, this type of remote is...

Multimedia nirvana is coming to the home... hopefully sometime in our lifetime. A flood of HDTVs, set-top boxes, home-theater PCs, and universal remotes (I have six, by the way) has poured into the market, yet getting them to play together is a challenge even a geek would like to avoid. Nonetheless, the climate is improving. Next year, we’ll likely see a convergence around standards such as UPnP (Universal Plug and Play), DLNA (Digital Living Network...

USB is the de facto peripheral interconnect outside the box. Inside, though, it’s been a different story. This year, USB has been internalized with a range of products and platforms becoming more popular. My two choices for “best” reflects this change, with Stackable- USB and the MicroBlade standards. StackableUSB (www.stackableusb.org) has its own organization behind it, and the MicroBlade...

Today’s computers are going multicore where performance matters. Whether it’s for a desktop or server, more cores are showing up in the compute engine and graphics rendering, providing users with everything from more lifelike video to solutions for computationally complex problems. This year, three products stood out. Intel’s six-core Xeon pushes the envelope for the typical operating platforms such as Linux and Windows. The Tesla C1060 opens...

For design flexibility, FPGAs are unsurpassed. But they have typically suffered performance or power penalties to achieve that distinction. Now, those penalties exist no more. This year’s best FPGAs can take a leading role in highvolume and high-performance designs. The structures that typical FPGAs use to provide their configurability add overhead to their internal design. To achieve functional density and performance levels comparable to those...

Retirement isn’t coming easy to 83-year-old Joseph Engelberger, widely known as the Father of Robotics. “There’s a lot that can still be done,” he says wistfully, despite already accomplishing so much in the robotic field. In fact, Engelberger and George Devol produced Unimate, the first industrial robot. While studying for his MS degree at Columbia University, Engelberger worked for Manning Maxwell & Moore as a physicist designing control systems for...

The continually morphing home-entertainment arena has turned to local-area networks (LANs) to tie things together. This year we chose three products, two fixed and one portable, as the first or best in their categories. One of the offerings supports the Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA), and you can count on DLNA becoming more of a force within this realm. These days, you can select from a range of NAS devices that are DLNA media servers. For example,...

His pioneering work in digital computer technology gave the world reliable random-access magnetic-core memory that revolutionized computer speed and power. Nevertheless, Jay Forrester says his work today is “much more important.” “In 1956, I thought the pioneering days of computer innovation were pretty much over,” Forrester said. “The biggest multiple in improvements in computer speed, reliability, and logical design were from 1946 to ’56. Rapid...

James Gosling, inventor of the Java programming language and the virtual machine, skipped many of his high school math and physics classes. His teachers knew it, but they still gave him A’s. That’s because, said Gosling, they knew why he was missing the classes. He was working for the physics department at the University of Calgary writing software for satellites. “That attitude was a huge influence on me,” said Gosling. “They understood that learning...

If you want to make a difference, don’t follow the crowd, Marvin Minsky advises today’s students. Don’t go into the most popular field. “That could be a disaster. When I started to work on artificial neural networks, only four other researchers were involved with this field. But today, there are many thousands of them. Interesting discoveries come only every few years—so each researcher has less than one chance in 1000 of making significant contributions,” Minsky...

Though I’m interested in both history and technology, it’s unusual for both of those interests to be served side by side. But upon arriving in Leuven, Belgium, recently for the Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre’s (IMEC’s) annual technology review meeting, I could not help but be struck by contrasts between the very old and the very new. Leuven, the provincial capital of Flemish Brabant, is an utterly charming college town dominated by its Catholic...

Multicore is the wave of the future, with more cores in our designs as time goes on. Some push the limits, while others creep up to a half-dozen very large cores. And then there’s the problem of programming these things. Communication lies at the heart of the matter. Memory is the key in a symmetrical multiprocessing (SMP) or non-uniform memory access (NUMA) environment. In other architectures, communication may be packet switches, FIFOs, or a host of...

Industrial operations gain many benefits by moving to Ethernet and TCP/IP, but those gains bring a potential downside: These popular technologies open plants up to viruses and attacks from outsiders. The shift to business networking makes it easier to move data throughout an enterprise. It’s also easier to maintain a well-known architecture than to manage networks built around lesser-known field buses. But the gains come with some tradeoffs. Manufacturing facilities...

Plant managers are adding a powerful tool in their efforts to gather more data and keep equipment running smoothly— wireless networking. It lets them locate sensors anywhere, move equipment without routing wires, and perform tasks that would have been difficult or even impossible. A range of wireless technologies is seeing increased usage as engineers gain confidence that they will work flawlessly in harsh industrial networks. In fact, acceptance of...

As global pressures squeeze manufacturers, many feel the urgency to optimize equipment in their plants. Existing controls are being tossed out and replaced with modern programmable automation controllers (PACs) that deliver more processing capabilities and more network connectivity. PACs have been gaining acceptance for years, giving engineers a single platform to address a broad range of needs. These platforms include software, which eradicates the ...

If you haven’t seen the commercials about the upcoming conversion to over-the-air, high-definition TV, then you probably don’t watch much television anyway— not even on an old black-and-white TV like the one I still have sitting on my shelf (see the figure). This antique still works and will continue to do so after Feb. 17 of next year if it’s connected to cable or a converter box. For those few of you who...

Ever wondered how much timing margin your system really has? You’ve probably asked some questions along these lines, such as: Does my crystal really need 20 parts-per-million (ppm) accuracy? What if noise couples to my timing clock edge? Will my display always look this good across manufacturing process corners? Is there enough timing margin to add spread spectrum (SS) for reduced electromagnetic interference (EMI)? This article helps answer...

Flexibility is key to FPGA success, but speed is equally important. Achronix almost triples the throughput of the system by taking clock gating to the extreme. The Achronix Speedster FPGAs use a unique pipeline architecture but completely hide it from developers. Designers can use the devices with unaltered Verilog, VHDL, or RTL. Developers also can continue to use development tools like Synplicity’s Synplify-Pro and Mentor Grahpics’ Precision. ...