Bryon Moyer

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Bryon Moyer is a technology editor at Semiconductor Engineering. He has been involved in the electronics industry for more than 35 years. The first 25 were as an engineer and marketer at all levels of management, working for MMI, AMD, Cypress, Altera, Actel, Teja Technologies, and Vector Fabrics. His industry focus was on PLDs/FPGAs, EDA, multicore processing, networking, and software analysis. He has been an editor and freelance ghostwriter for more than 12 years, having previously written for EE Journal. His editorial coverage has included AI, security, MEMS and sensors, IoT, and semiconductor processing to his portfolio. His technical interests are broad, and he finds particular satisfaction in drawing useful parallels between seemingly unrelated fields. He has a BSEE from UC Berkeley and an MSEE from Santa Clara University. Away from work, Bryon enjoys music, photography, travel, cooking, hiking, and languages.

Author's Latest Posts

Improving Accuracy In Satellite Navigation Systems
By Bryon Moyer - 20 Oct, 2021 - Comments: 0

Increasing dependency on the global navigation satellite system (GNSS) constellations is raising concerns about what happens when signals are unavailable, even for short periods of time. GNSS systems affect our daily lives in ways we often don’t see, from location services to cell phone timing. In fact, these satellites have become a necessary part of critical infrastructure, and higher ac... » read more

Will Co-Packaged Optics Replace Pluggables?
By Bryon Moyer - 14 Oct, 2021 - Comments: 0

As optical connections work their way deeper into the data center, a debate is underway. Is it better to use pluggable optical modules or to embed lasers deep into advanced packages? There are issues of convenience, power, and reliability driving the discussion, and an eventual winner isn’t clear yet. “The industry is definitely embracing co-packaged optics,” said James Pond, principal... » read more

PCB And IC Technologies Meet In The Middle
By Bryon Moyer - 12 Oct, 2021 - Comments: 1

Surface-mount technology (SMT) is evolving far beyond its roots as a way of assembling packaged chips onto printed circuit boards without through-holes. It is now moving inside packages that will themselves be mounted on PCBs. But SMT for advanced packages isn’t the same as the SMT we’ve been used to. “Many systems include multiple ASICs, a lot of memory, and that's all integrated i... » read more

Competing Auto Sensor Fusion Approaches
By Bryon Moyer - 07 Oct, 2021 - Comments: 0

As today’s internal-combustion engines are replaced by electric/electronic vehicles, mechanical-system sensors will be supplanted by numerous electronic sensors both for efficient operation and for achieving various levels of autonomy. Some of these new sensors will operate alone, but many prominent ones will need their outputs combined — or “fused” — with the outputs of other sensor... » read more

Will Monolithic 3D DRAM Happen?
By Bryon Moyer - 09 Sep, 2021 - Comments: 1

As DRAM scaling slows, the industry will need to look for other ways to keep pushing for more and cheaper bits of memory. The most common way of escaping the limits of planar scaling is to add the third dimension to the architecture. There are two ways to accomplish that. One is in a package, which is already happening. The second is to sale the die into the Z axis, which which has been a to... » read more

New Memories Add New Faults
By Bryon Moyer - 07 Sep, 2021 - Comments: 1

New non-volatile memories (NVM) bring new opportunities for changing how we use memory in systems-on-chip (SoCs), but they also add new challenges for making sure they will work as expected. These new memory types – primarily MRAM and ReRAM – rely on unique physical phenomena for storing data. That means that new test sequences and fault models may be needed before they can be released t... » read more

Will Automotive Ethernet Win?
By Bryon Moyer - 02 Sep, 2021 - Comments: 2

As internal combustion engines are replaced by electric motors, and mechanical linkages increasingly replaced by electronic messaging, an in-vehicle network is needed to facilitate communication. Ethernet, amended for automotive and other time-sensitive applications, appears to be the network of choice. But is that choice a done deal? And will Ethernet replace all other in-car networks? The ... » read more

Why TinyML Is Such A Big Deal
By Bryon Moyer - 02 Sep, 2021 - Comments: 1

While machine-learning (ML) development activity most visibly focuses on high-power solutions in the cloud or medium-powered solutions at the edge, there is another collection of activity aimed at implementing machine learning on severely resource-constrained systems. Known as TinyML, it’s both a concept and an organization — and it has acquired significant momentum over the last year or... » read more

The Search For 5G mmWave Filters
By Bryon Moyer - 12 Aug, 2021 - Comments: 0

Cellular telephone technology takes advantage of a large number of frequency bands to provide ever-increasing bandwidth for mobile use. Each of those bands needs a filter to keep its signals separate from other bands, but the filter technologies in current use for cellphones may not scale up to the full millimeter-wave (mmWave) range planned for 5G. “MmWave will happen,” said Mike Eddy, ... » read more

Who Owns In-Chip Monitoring Data?
By Bryon Moyer - 10 Aug, 2021 - Comments: 1

In-chip monitors provide unprecedented visibility into the inner workings of complex integrated circuits for everything from process control to fine binning, preventive system maintenance, and failure analysis. But there may be many consumers of different slices of the data at very different phases of the chip lifecycle, raising questions about who controls and owns all of that data. The ans... » read more

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