It’s not news that the electronic content of an automobile takes up an ever-increasing percentage of its cost. In fact, it is estimated the electronic content will reach 35 percent of vehicle value by 2020, and 50 percent 10 years later (compared to only 15 percent as recently as 1990). Current luxury automobiles include up […]
Forget Orange: OLED Is The New Black
Although there are plenty of whipper snappers who stand in line for hours to get their hands on the latest consumer gadget, your columnist is not one of them, as evidenced by my 55-inch 3D-capable TV—you know, the subject of such pieces as “Shambling corpse of 3D TV finally falls down dead.” Sure, it’s an […]
What’s All This 5G Stuff, Anyhow?
In 2017, the global population was 7.56 billion. However, according to the latest Ericsson Mobility Report, there were around 7.8 billion mobile subscriptions at the end of 2017, for a penetration rate of 103 percent. Of those, 5.2 billion are broadband subscriptions. Unsurprisingly, mobile data traffic dwarfs voice traffic, driven primarily by more video content […]
Embedded System Security Begins With Secure Hardware
One of the advantages of a Netflix subscription is the opportunity to binge-watch previously overlooked shows. We recently discovered “NCIS,” which made its debut in 2003 and is still going strong after more than 300 episodes. Several nights a week we thrill to the exploits of the intrepid team of agents from the Naval Criminal […]
Li-Ion Batteries Eke Out Performance Gains As Demand Surges
You gotta love Elon Musk—the man is everywhere. Current Musk projects include Tesla Motors, PowerWall, and SpaceX. Take a look at the drawing board, and things get interesting. Hyperloop promises to speed passengers from LA to SF in 35 minutes; the Boring Company wants to cut costs of building tunnels by 75 percent, and recently […]
The Final Frontier? Class-D And GaN Take On HiFi Audio
Those of us who are afflicted with a passion for playing in local bands don’t have the luxury of hiring roadies to haul gear, so we’ve long lamented the size and weight of pro audio systems. In recent years, we’ve seen the rise of speakers with integrated amplifiers that pack a considerable sonic punch in […]
The Radar Technology Behind Autonomous Vehicles
Radar has been around for a long time: in 1904, German inventor Christian Huelsmeyer patented his ‘telemobiloscope,’ an early implementation of radar technology that could detect ships up to 3000 m away. The device used a directional spark-gap transmitter operating at a wavelength of 40-50 cm and separate receiver antenna. The initial design indicated only […]
Spurred By Low-Cost Development Kits, Maker Projects Span The Benchtop To The Cloud
If you’re electronically-inclined, you gotta love the Maker Movement. The spiritual descendants of generations of home hobbyists, tinkerers, and shade-tree mechanics, Makers are taking full advantage of the Internet of Things and its emphasis on cheap edge-node processing to put together complex projects that rely heavily on low-cost development kits. Incidentally, I first dipped my […]
EV Technology And The Search For (Even More) Ludicrous Performance
Pure electric vehicles (also called battery electric vehicles, or BEVs) are becoming less of a rarity on the streets. Cumulative global sales of highway-capable battery electric cars and vans passed one million units in September 2016. The Nissan Leaf is the world leader with sales of more than 250,000 units: Tesla’s Model S is next, […]
Low-Cost Development Kits Position Suppliers for IoT Success
Those of us who are of a certain age will remember the days before 1971 and the introduction of the first microprocessor. Intel’s 4004 and its competitors brought relatively low-cost embedded computing to the masses, and along with it the need for development kits to help speed the design process. The ancestors of today’s development […]