leland teschler | executive editor I once had a lengthy exchange with a guy who claimed RF from WiFi was making him sick. After numerous emails back and forth in which I tried to correct his misconceptions about WiFi signals, I gently suggested that he go find an RF screen room and sit in it […]
Lee's blog
V2Clueless – Next generation of connected apps?
Leland teschler Executive Editor If you had been watching the Saturday Night Live TV show in mid-January of 2012, you would have seen a skit called the Headz Up App. It was an ad for a fictional app aimed at people so distracted by texting on their smartphone that they were prone to walking cluelessly […]
Ultra-low-power Wi-Fi connectivity chipset aims to accelerate IoT adoption
Dialog Semiconductor plc has introduced the FC9000, the first Wi-Fi SoC to be released since the closing of the acquisition of Silicon Motion’s Mobile Communications product line on May 31, 2019. The FC9000 is targeted at battery-powered IoT devices such as smart door locks, video monitoring systems, smart thermostats, and wireless sensors enabling direct connectivity […]
Connecting the car is the easy part
At the annual conference of the Society of Automotive Engineers, no small number of technical papers cover issues surrounding driver interactions with features on the car dashboard. Touchscreens, in particular, are a hot topic. You can find SAE papers with impressive-sounding titles such as, Touch Interactive Display Systems: Human Factors Considerations, System Design and Performance […]
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, […]
The danger of treating autonomous vehicle control as a solved problem
LEE TESCHLER EXECUTIVE EDITOR A panelist made an interesting comment during the recently concluded TU-Automotive connected car conference near Detroit. It happened during one of the many sessions devoted to software infrastructure and connected services. “In Silicon Valley, autonomous vehicle control and driving is viewed as a solved problem. The real emphasis is on making […]
For Arduino fans — The Arduino Inventor’s Guide
The 312-page Arduino Inventor’s Guide is part of a book series by the online electronics retail store SparkFun and explains ten projects focused around the Arduino board which helps explain basic programming and electronic concepts. The explanations assume little or no background in electronics and are wrapped around ten simple projects involving LEDs, a few […]
The difference between microprocessors and application processors
Sometimes terminology changes faster than the technology it applies to. That’s arguably the case for the term application processor. Specifically, an application processor is a special kind of microprocessor. The application processor moniker came out of the cellular industry. In a mobile device, it refers to a chip used for the primary processing of cellular […]
Engineers who hate their boss
Back in the Stone Age of electronics, a periodical called Electronic Design was among the premier publications serving engineers in that industry. Eyeball the yellowing pages of that magazine from the 1970s and it’s easy to see why it was highly revered. The first microprocessors had just left the labs at Intel, and engineers were […]
