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

Are FPGAs More Secure Than Processors?
By Bryon Moyer - 08 Oct, 2020 - Comments: 0

Security concerns often focus on software being executed on processors. But not all electronic functionality runs in software. FPGAs provide another way to do work, and they can be more secure than functions executed in software. FPGAs provide more control of hardware and are more opaque to attackers. In the case of embedded FPGAs, the designer is in complete control of the entire system. Th... » read more

Compiling And Optimizing Neural Nets
By Bryon Moyer - 10 Sep, 2020 - Comments: 0

Edge inference engines often run a slimmed-down real-time engine that interprets a neural-network model, invoking kernels as it goes. But higher performance can be achieved by pre-compiling the model and running it directly, with no interpretation — as long as the use case permits it. At compile time, optimizations are possible that wouldn’t be available if interpreting. By quantizing au... » read more

Better Inspection, Higher Yield
By Bryon Moyer - 08 Sep, 2020 - Comments: 0

Wafers can be inspected for large, obvious defects, or for small, subtle ones. The former is referred to as macro-inspection, while the latter is micro-inspection. These processes use different machines with different capital and operating costs, and they might look like competing approaches with different economic returns. In fact, they are complementary tactics that can be balanced within an ... » read more

Software-Defined Vehicles
By Bryon Moyer - 03 Sep, 2020 - Comments: 1

Automobiles long ago stopped being purely mechanical systems. But as more components are electrified — and, in particular, as the drivetrain is electrified — cars are becoming software-defined vehicles. Some think of such cars as computers on wheels. But as these systems continue to evolve, adding in more assisted and semi-autonomous capabilities, that comparison is looking increasingly ... » read more

All-in-One Vs. Point Tools For Security
By Bryon Moyer - 03 Sep, 2020 - Comments: 0

Security remains an urgent concern for builders of any system that might tempt attackers, but designers find themselves faced with a bewildering array of security options. Some of those are point solutions for specific pieces of the security puzzle. Others bill themselves as all-in-one, where the whole puzzle filled in. Which approach is best depends on the resources you have available and y... » read more

Wireless Power Market Heats Up
By Bryon Moyer - 26 Aug, 2020 - Comments: 2

The wireless power market is in flux as established technologies meet newer approaches. Old standards battles have simmered somewhat, but competing messages remain. What the public ends up using will depend heavily on public charging infrastructure, but the stakes are significant. The market for battery chargers is forecast to reach $25B by 2022. Most of those chargers plug into the wall, bu... » read more

What Happened To Execute-in-Place?
By Bryon Moyer - 25 Aug, 2020 - Comments: 0

Executing code directly from non-volatile memory, where it is stored, greatly simplifies compute architectures — especially for simple embedded devices like microcontrollers (MCUs). However, the divergence of memory and logic processes has made that nearly impossible today. The term “execute-in-place,” or ”XIP,” originated with the embedded NOR memory in MCUs that made XIP viable. ... » read more

5G Brings New Testing Challenges
By Bryon Moyer - 11 Aug, 2020 - Comments: 0

As 5G nears commercial reality, makers of chips and systems that will support 5G will need to take on the standard burden of characterizing and testing their systems to ensure both performance and regulatory adherence. Millimeter-wave (mmWave) and beamforming capabilities present the biggest testing challenges. “5G is expected to have the extended coverage plus the bandwidth to harness ... » read more

WiFi Evolves For The IoT
By Bryon Moyer - 06 Aug, 2020 - Comments: 0

WiFi is everywhere, and it’s the most prevalent of the communication protocols that use unlicensed spectrum. But as a common protocol for the Internet of Things (IoT), it faces challenges both because of congestion and the amount of energy it consumes. Two new approaches aim to address those concerns. One is to use multiple channels at once. The second involves the new 802.11ah HaLow stand... » read more

What’s After 5G
By Bryon Moyer - 20 Jul, 2020 - Comments: 1

This year’s IEEE Symposia on VLSI Technology and Circuits (VLSI 2020) included a presentation by NTT Docomo that looked far into the future of cellular communications, setting the stage for a broad industry shift in communication. This is far from trivial. 5G only just recently entered the commercial world, and — especially with the higher millimeter-wave (mmWave) frequencies — it has ... » read more

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