February 4, 2002[Editorial] Building People And Killing Bureaucracy
They called him "Neutron Jack." They said he'd never tame the massive bureaucracy and turn GE into a world-class competitor. But they were wrong. Today, Jack Welch, the retired president and CEO of GE, is considered the CEO of CEOs. Now, under his 20...
November 19, 2001[Forefront] RapidIO Gets Chip Traction
RapidIO is rapidly becoming a chip reality. Chips are emerging that implement RapidIO connectivity. Also, a RapidIO serial bus implementation promises to build on the InfiniBand/Gigabit-Ethernet serial bus base. RapidIO is a lower-level...
October 29, 2001[Forefront] 3GIO Named Successor To PCI/PCI-X
Parallel buses are giving way to high-speed serial/pseudoserial buses, especially in I/Os and system interconnects. Buses like PCI and PCI-X, the universal PC I/O and embedded system buses, will transition to a serial bus, the 3GIO (...
October 15, 2001[Forefront] Perform FPGA Board Field Upgrades Via The Internet
The idea of field upgrades of reprogramming FPGAs is a key attraction to designers. Unfortunately, field-upgrade meth-odology has been pretty much left to the engineer. Xilinx's Pave 1.0 Framework changes that. It enables designers to reprogram...
October 15, 2001[Product Innovation] InfiniBand Switch Node Delivers Eight 4X Ports
InfiniBand is on its way to becoming a mainstream switch fabric. The key to implementing InfiniBand is its switch nodes, the individual nodes that make up the warp and woof of the interconnection fabric. The good news is that Red Switch is fielding...
October 15, 2001[Technology Report] Configurability Versus Extensibility
Some controversy exists about just what is "configurable" and what is "extensible" for soft, synthesizable microprocessor cores. Classic definitions that seem to stand are: Configurable: adding or removing already defined resources...
October 1, 2001[Embedded in Electronic Design] On-Chip Debugging
Bill: Today we have the hardware hooks to debug processors with on-chip memory. But it's not enough. Code size and chip clock rates have risen, so we need better on-chip debugging resources. Ray: Don't forget, it's the...
October 1, 2001[Embedded in Electronic Design] Hot Product
Multi 2000 IDE Brings Optimizing C++ Compilers To ARM. Version 3.0 of Green Hills' Multi integrated development environment supports the ARM7, ARM9, and ARM10 processor families, along with the ARM architecture-compliant Intel XScale...
October 1, 2001[Embedded in Electronic Design] MIPS On-Chip Debug Hardware
One of the first RISCs, the MIPS architecture has come a long way in sophistication and performance. It's a mainstream architecture licensed by MIPS Technologies to chip and FPGA vendors. MIPS made its mark as a compact, high-performance CPU in...
October 1, 2001[Embedded in Electronic Design] ARM On-Chip Debug Hardware
ARM, one of the twenty-first century microprocessor standards, has a major presence in SoCs. A 32-bit RISC, it was designed for mid- to low-level applications. It was also designed for low-power operation. Vendors can license the ARM...
October 1, 2001[Embedded in Electronic Design] Debug Products
USB + JTAG + DSP = Debugging Tool From Electronic Warfare Associates, the compact Blackhawk JTAG emulator plugs into a standard PC USB port. The Blackhawk draws all power through the USB connection. It handles the...
September 17, 2001[Forefront] Repeater Chip Opens Up InfiniBand Design
Sometimes it's the small things that count, especially in networking. For example, in switch fabrics, implementations may need more than just the standard nodesHCAs, TCAs, and switches. One key part is a repeater, a chip that strengthens and...
September 3, 2001[Embedded in Electronic Design] Bad Drives Out The Good
Heard of Gresham's Law? It says that "bad money drives out the good." This applies to more arenas than finance, like management. Bad managers drive out the good ones. Once there's a tipping balanceenough bad managers to make a fatal...
September 3, 2001[Embedded in Electronic Design] News Clips
Integrity RTOS supports MIPS32 cores (4Kc, 4Km, and 4Kp). This royalty-free RTOS is targeted at secure, ultra-reliable environments. It's supported by Green Hills' Multi IDE. Green Hills Software Inc., www.gh.com. 8-Bit...
September 3, 2001[Embedded in Electronic Design] System Boards
PMC Module Delivers 100 Mbits/1-Gbit Ethernet Ethernet won't go away. It has become a key connection for networking and connectivity. From Cyclone Mi-crosystems, the PMC58 packs 100 Mbits and 1-Gbit Ethernet into a...