Multicore Editor's Insight By Joe Pavlat, Editorial Director OpenSystems Media Communications Group Strategies must change as the gigahertz race becomes a thing of the past.

MILITARY DSP-FPGA INSIGHTS

Latest ADCs will cut IF sampling down to nanoseconds By Rob Hoyecki, Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing Why receiver systems are poised for noticeable upticks in range, sensitivity, and selectivity.

FORWARD THINKING

Chip shipments on the upswing By Will Strauss, Contributing Editor What was top of mind for Will following CES?

Data acquisition

Compressing ADCs defuses data rate explosion in Data Acquisition Systems By Daniel Kreindler, Samplify Systems If there were a DAS Olympics, algorithms competing in the "Compression for Medical/Wireless" event would be among the fastest.

Sister Publication: FPGAs

IP tag technology identifies stolen FPGA designs, tracks the security leak By Paul Dillien, HighTech Marketing Theft of sensitive military designs is not a new problem, but new technology development is providing a novel way to identify IP ownership and trace FPGA design theft with a noninvasive, nondestructive test. This is accomplished via an IP tag that emits coded thermal signals. The thermal signals can only be detected by authorized users to provide a discrete way of signaling internal conditions from a working chip. In addition, it can be adapted to help fight the growing problem of fake devices and monitor system status more effectively than RF tags or electrical signaling.

Sister Publication: FPGAs

FPGA enhances digital photo album functionality By David Auyeung, Altera In an example using an FPGA development kit to try out innovative designs, a student team explores the possibilities for going beyond the basic digital picture frame.

Sister Publication: FPGAs

Releasing the full potential of FPGA-based designs By Rob Evans, Altium Limited For all the power and flexibility FPGAs bring to embedded designs, the additional development process injects new levels of complexity and constraint into the design workflow. Unifying the conventional hardware-FPGA-software design processes to make full use of FPGA reprogrammability is one way forward.

DSPs

White Paper: Synthesizing Algorithms from MATLAB and Model-based Descriptions By Chris Eddington, Synopsys, Inc. When it comes to implementing mathematical DSP behavior directly in logic, these algorithmic subsystems are doing the heavy lifting.