News

Within a week, Intel and Freescale both announced new high-end embedded processors. They’re both packed with multicore processors, DRAM controllers, and PCI Express interfaces. But, for all their similarities, they couldn’t be more different.

In this corner, we have Freescale’s new P1022, the sixth member of the QorIQ family. And in this corner, we have “Jasper Forest,” a mostly new family of chips from Intel. Both are more power-efficient than their predecessors, though, in one case, that’s not saying much. And both are well-supported with software and development tools.

Did you hear the one about Microsoft and the patent lawyers? They have to stop selling Microsoft Word!

No, seriously. Last week a judge found Microsoft guilty of patent infringement and ordered the company to stop selling Microsoft Word. Can we even imagine a world without Word anymore?

I think this case presents something of a Rorschach test for nerds. (Rorschach tests are those ink blots you’re supposed to describe to the psychologist. Everyone sees something different.) Some people jump up and down and clap their hands on hearing the news, shouting “yippee” and gloating unwholesomely that Microsoft has lost a patent-infringement case. Hooray for the little guy. Stick it to The Man, etc.

“The coldest winter I saw was the summer I spent in San Francisco,” quipped Mark Twain. It’s good to know some things never change. The City by the Bay (or simply “The City” to those within driving distance) didn’t disappoint, as the comforting midsummer fog enshrouded nerds from near and far. Grab an Irish coffee and hop aboard the cable car; it must be time for the 46th annual Design Automation Conference.

San Francisco is practically an island, surrounded on three sides by water, so when it’s baking hot elsewhere in California, the low atmospheric pressure draws moisture over the top of San Francisco and, like Brigadoon, it disappears from view. Only the tips of the Golden Gate Bridge peek through the fog, like orange traffic cones guiding visitors across the bay.

If you're into fast 32-bit processors, Samsung is announcing a new ARM-based chip that runs at 1 GHz. That in itself is interesting, but what’s more remarkable is how the chip got so fast.

ARM-based processors are generally known for their small size and power efficiency, not their speed. That Samsung was able to make its ARM A8 device run at 1 GHz is something of a milestone.

It’s also remarkable because Samsung didn’t actually make its chip run at 1 GHz. Instead, it farmed out the design work to Texas-based Intrinsity, and it’s Intrinsity that deserves a lot of the credit for breaking the 1000-MHz barrier. Yes, you read that right: an Asian company outsourced the work to Americans.

It's a slow news day here at Embedded Technology Journal, so we're taking this summertime opportunity to review a bit of our world by numbers. Perhaps some of these illuminating factoids will give you some good business ideas. Or just help you win a bar bet.

According to Microsoft’s own research conducted as it was developing Vista, the second most-popular computer activity is playing games. In terms of time spent in front of the computer, the only thing that trumps games is surfing the Web. These ranked above email, music, shopping – and work.

Entrepreneurship and innovation are all about zigging while everyone else zags. You’ve got your engineering skills down, but what about that dreaded word, marketing? In a world where Pet Rocks sell by the millions, and where buggy and expensive operating systems outsell small, inexpensive, and reliable ones, marketing clearly plays a big role. There’s no need to sell your soul – just know how to sell your product.

In this week’s installment, we examine “the curse of knowledge.” That’s what happens when you know more about your product or service than your customers do. Knowing too much is a liability when it comes time to sell it to someone else. You need to selectively forget what you know and re-learn your product from a customer’s perspective. Let’s look at a few examples.