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

Will PAYGO Shake Up How We Pay for Chips?
By Bryon Moyer - 05 Aug, 2021 - Comments: 0

System builders are used to buying integrated circuits on a simple transactional basis — the chip has a price, and that’s what you pay. But some application spaces may have a wide variety of capabilities that need hardware support, and each feature may not be used for every instance. Traditionally, one would design different chips for different feature mixes and price points. But a new p... » read more

Massive IoT Interop Fuels Protocol Battle
By Bryon Moyer - 15 Jul, 2021 - Comments: 0

Wireless standards are plentiful, but most are not capable of being scaled to the level of a smart city. As a result, such networks have been built application-by-application using proprietary stacks, often with non-interoperable network layers. That, in turn, has slowed the proliferation of dense wireless connectivity at scale. “In a hyper-connected world, connectivity choices are driv... » read more

Retimers Replacing Redrivers As Signal Speeds Increase
By Bryon Moyer - 08 Jul, 2021 - Comments: 1

Retimers are undergoing a renaissance as new PHY protocols prove too demanding for redrivers. Redrivers and retimers both have been used to extend wired signal reach over the years. But redrivers have dominated this space due to their relative simplicity and lower cost. That balance is beginning to change. “A retimer represents three things no one wants in their system — area, cost, a... » read more

5G Chips Add Test Challenges
By Bryon Moyer - 06 Jul, 2021 - Comments: 1

The advent of chips supporting millimeter-wave (mmWave) 5G signals is creating a new set of design and testing challenges. Effects that could be ignored at lower frequencies are now important. Performing high-volume test of RF chips will require much more from automated test equipment (ATE) than is required for chips operating below 6 GHz. “MmWave design is a pretty old thing,” said Y... » read more

IoT Security: Confusing And Fragmented
By Bryon Moyer - 01 Jul, 2021 - Comments: 0

Security regulations for Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices are evolving around the world, but there is no consistent set of requirements that can be applied globally — and there may never be. What exists today is a patchwork of certification labs and logos. That makes it difficult for IoT-device designers to know where to get their security blessed. Unlike in data centers, where there is a ... » read more

There’s More To Machine Learning Than CNNs
By Bryon Moyer - 09 Jun, 2021 - Comments: 1

Neural networks – and convolutional neural networks (CNNs) in particular – have received an abundance of attention over the last few years, but they're not the only useful machine-learning structures. There are numerous other ways for machines to learn how to solve problems, and there is room for alternative machine-learning structures. “Neural networks can do all this really comple... » read more

Is There a Practical Test For Rowhammer Vulnerability?
By Bryon Moyer - 08 Jun, 2021 - Comments: 3

Rowhammer is proving to be a difficult DRAM issue to fix. While efforts continue to mitigate or eliminate the effect, no solid solution has yet made it to volume production. In addition, more aggressive process nodes are expected to exacerbate the problem. In the absence of a fix, then, testing may be one way to give DRAM manufacturers and users some way to segregate devices that are more su... » read more

The Case For FPGAs In Cars
By Bryon Moyer - 03 Jun, 2021 - Comments: 0

Field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) thrive in rapidly evolving new markets before being replaced by hard-wired ASICs, but in automotive that crossover is likely to happen significantly later than in the past. Historically, FPGAs have held temporary positions until volumes increased enough to cost-reduce the FPGAs out in favor of a hardened version. With automobiles, there are so many chan... » read more

11 Ways To Reduce AI Energy Consumption
By Bryon Moyer - 13 May, 2021 - Comments: 1

As the machine-learning industry evolves, the focus has expanded from merely solving the problem to solving the problem better. “Better” often has meant accuracy or speed, but as data-center energy budgets explode and machine learning moves to the edge, energy consumption has taken its place alongside accuracy and speed as a critical issue. There are a number of approaches to neural netw... » read more

Chip Monitoring And Test Collaborate
By Bryon Moyer - 11 May, 2021 - Comments: 0

As on-chip monitoring becomes more prevalent in complex advanced-node ICs, it’s easy to question whether or not it conflicts with conventional silicon testing. It might even supplant such testing in the future. Or alternatively, they could interact, with each supporting the other. “On-chip monitors provide fine-grained observability into effects and issues that are otherwise difficult or... » read more

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