Developing Effective Design Strategies for Today’s Wearable Devices: Power Management


As the next wave of wearable devices expands into a new class of revolutionary and innovative products, there will be a growing importance placed on the real-time operating system (RTOS) and corresponding middleware. Wearable System-on-Chip (SoC) processors require an operating system optimized for size and performance with power-efficient wireless connectivity options needed for machine-to-mac... » read more

The Real Value In Customizing Instructions


One element that distinguishes devices for the emerging IoT market from the mobile devices of the mature handheld market is power. Specifically, while the latter can accept a battery recharge cycle of days, the former demands years between battery recharge/replacement. Where the two devices resemble one another is their need for high performance. While embedded CPU cores have concentrated o... » read more

One-on-One: Steven Woo


Semiconductor Engineering sat down with Steven Woo, vice president and distinguished inventor at [getentity id="22671" e_name="Rambus"], to talk about the IoT and where the real problems are showing up. SE: What are the big challenges as we move toward an [getkc id="76" comment="Internet of Things"]-connected world? Woo: The challenges we see, moving forward aren’t particularly related... » read more

System Bits: Feb. 17


Can you hear light? Silicon photonics has gained increasing attention as a key driver of lab-on-a-chip biosensors and of faster-than-electronics communication between computer chips. The technology builds on tiny structures known as silicon photonic wires. The wires work because light moves slower in the silicon core than in surrounding air and glass. Thus, the light is trapped inside the wire... » read more

New Market Expectations For 2015


This year more than 26 people provided predictions for 2015. Most of these came from the EDA industry, so the results may be rather biased. However, ecosystems are coming closer together in many parts of the semiconductor food chain, meaning that the EDA companies often can see what is happening in dependent industries and in the system design houses. Thus their predictions may have already res... » read more

New Challenges For Wearables


The earliest recorded mention of a wristwatch dates back to the late 1500s, but it really began gaining adherents in Great Britain’s Boer War campaign as a way of synchronizing military actions beyond the line of sight. Strapping a pocket watch to a horse or a camel simply didn’t work, and pulling it out of a jacket pocket was not only inconvenient, it was dangerous. Advertised as a “c... » read more

Redefining Progress


After lots of wrangling over the whether Moore's Law is alive, dead, or languishing at somewhere in between, that discussion now seems about as relevant as the look and feel of Apple's early Macintosh operating system—an issue that back in the 1980s spawned a very public war with Microsoft. Today that argument is about as relevant as whether Betamax was better than VHS. Whether it's Moor... » read more

How I Survived CES


To come away from the annual Consumer Electronics Show with a shred of sanity, you need to focus on what matters. It’s easy not to. The minute you step foot into the crush of any exhibit floor you’re dragged into a massive undertow of technology that’s hard to swim from. The hype is palpable, the noise deafening, the products endless. Because of this sensory overload, it’s easy to la... » read more

Blog Review: Jan. 14


Ansys' Bill Vandermark flags the top five engineering technology articles for the week, leaning heavily on CES. The 3D scanner is intriguing because of the link to 3D printing. Mentor's Robin Bornoff returns to the drawing board to design a better water heater. Unfortunately, you probably won't be able to find one of these in your local Home Depot—ever. eSilicon's Jack Harding defines w... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Dec. 30


Crafting ultrathin color coatings Harvard University researchers have developed a technique that coats a metallic object with an extremely thin layer of semiconductor, just a few nanometers thick. And while the semiconductor is a steely gray color, the object ends up shining in vibrant hues because the coating exploits interference effects in the thin films. Carefully tuned in the laboratory, ... » read more

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