4D Systems today announced it will demonstrate its gen4 HMI display modules and Workshop4 IDE software at Embedded World 2018 Nuremberg. Visitors are invited to visit the stand (Hall 1 – stand 201) and take up the “Display it!” challenge, bringing their complex display design issues to the 4D Systems engineering team to solve. Whether […]
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RISC vs. CISC Architectures: Which one is better?
Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC) is a type or category of the processor, or Instruction Set Architecture (ISA). Speaking broadly, an ISA is a medium whereby a processor communicates with the human programmer (although there are several other formally identified layers in between the processor and the programmer). An instruction is a command given to […]
Teardown: Inside Amazon’s Echo Dot
The Amazon Echo Dot is essentially the top portion of the Amazon Echo, but without the speaker underneath it. Eliminating the big speaker drops the price of the from $180 for the Echo to $50 for the Echo Dot. The Echo Dot does have its own speaker, but the speaker is comparable to what you […]
Microcontroller Top Talks in December on EDABoard.com forums
Peer-to-peer, engineer-to-engineer questions and answers from the EDABoard.com engineering community around microcontrollers. Click the “Read more” link and follow the entire conversation and maybe add your two cents by logging in to EDAboard.com. Open Source/Open Hardware MCU board with Eagle/Gerbers available? – I am looking for open source/open hardware projects that have Eagle source files […]
Top microcontroller stories of 2017
Here are the microcontroller features that got the most interest from readers in 2017. What is an open drain? Open-collector and -drain devices sink current when controlled to one state and have no current flow (i.e., output a high impedance state) in the other state. It is fairly common to use open-drains (open-collectors) together […]
Arm TrustZone explained
Arm TrustZone is a system-wide approach to embedded security option for the ARM Cortex-based processor systems. Cortex-based cores are used in everything from microcontrollers (MCUs) to high-performance processors. Arm TrustZone is an embedded security technology that starts at the hardware level by creating two environments that can run simultaneously on a single core: a secure […]
Making sense of displays: OLED, AMOLED, POLED, PMOLED and T-OLED
Organic Light-Emitting Diode (OLED) displays are made using organic light emitting diodes, which emit light when current runs through them. The basic colors of light for these diodes are Red, Green, and Blue (RGB), which combine to create an extensive range of colors of visible light. OLED displays are different from Liquid Crystal Displays (LCDs) […]
Asynchronous serial communication explained (including TTL, UART, and RS232)
A microcontroller can communicate with a computer or another device by using a standard method of communication that has been worked out ahead of time. Serial communication is a very common means of communication. Unless you’ve been working in electronics for a while, you might not have a full handle on the plain facts about […]
How’d they do that? Researchers connect 3D-printed sensors to WiFi without using electronics
A group of researchers at the University of Washington have figured out a way to make 3D-printed objects emit WiFi signals containing status information, all without using electrical power. The technique uses what’s called WiFi backscattering. The method is to make the 3D-printed device amplitude-modulate a WiFi signal coming from a conventional source such as […]
Field of memory system improvements could lead to shrinking SRAM on SoCs
Leti, a research institute of CEA Tech, demonstrated significant improvements in the field of memory systems at IEDM 2017 this week. These include reconfiguring Static Random-Access Memory (SRAM) into Content-Addressable Memory (CAM), improving non-volatile crossbar memories and using advanced Tunnel Field-Effect Transistors (TFET). Another breakthrough presents a high-density SRAM bitcell on Leti’s CoolCubeTM 3D platform, […]