The New Face Of MCUs


For years, the humble microcontroller was known as the workhorse of white goods and other embedded applications that required some amount of processing, but not as much as a microprocessor would provide. Much has changed since then. Today’s MCUs are the star components in fast-growing and increasingly sophisticated application areas such as automotive, smartphones and the Internet of Thing... » read more

The Smartphonification Of Things


By Ann Steffora Mutschler The term, ‘Internet of Things,’ was first coined more than a decade ago by technology visionary Kevin Ashton but has slowly trickled down to the world of chip design and is now mentioned constantly in conversation. The reason is simple: System-level design tools are getting sophisticated enough to handle the intricacies required by devices in an Internet of ... » read more

Lines Blur Between Processor And Microcontroller


By Ed Sperling Big changes are happening in the microcontroller market. That statement alone should give pause for most design engineers and raise their level of skepticism. In the past, microcontrollers were a steady business but not exactly an interesting one. That was before the big push toward “green” and the 65nm process node. And it was before vendors began adding logic and more fun... » read more

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