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Low-Power Wireless

This month we welcome back Will Strauss as a regular contributor to Low-Power Wireless. Will is a leading industry expert on signal processing and wireless communications, having covered the turf since founding Forward Concepts in 1984 after spending many years at Motorola Semiconductor.

Will will be reporting monthly on developments that affect the wireless industry, analyzing the latest trends and technologies that are shaping the wireless landscape. I'm sure you'll find his insights as informative and thought-provoking as we do.

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"Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things."
--Peter Drucker

"The best way to predict the future is to create it."
--Abraham Lincoln

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Low-Power Design

In September the trust-and-parry continued in the low-power semiconductor wars. At IDF Intel introduced its latest Atom processor, with a redesigned architecture and much better power specs. ARM immediately countered by announcing its next-generation processor core, the Cortex-A15 MPCore, claiming "a 5x performance improvement over today's advanced smartphone processors, within a comparable energy footprint." 

Beyond defending ARM's dominance in cell phones the Cortex-A15 is a shot across Intel's bow, announcing that ARM is taking aim at Intel's core server processor market.With Intel and ARM battling it out on that turf we should see some real progress. Which of them comes out ahead remains to be seen. 
John Donovan
John DonovanOtellini and Perlmutter Kick off IDF
Paul Otellini kicked off this year's Intel Developer's Forum (IDF) declaring, "Intel used to be a chip company...now we're becoming a solutions provider." Intel's just the latest semicon firm to be forced to move up the food chain, offering more than just chips.More...
Steve Leibson
Steve LeibsonNews from two fronts in the low-power processor wars
It's been a big couple of weeks for major news in the world of low-power microprocessors. AMD gave two significant processor presentations at the Hot Chips 22 conference held at Stanford University on August 24. One processor, Bulldozer, is a high-performance, multithreaded, multi-issue x86 machine designed to compete at the high end. However, AMD's Bobcat presentation at Hot Chips 22 was the one really focused on power. More...
Robert Cravotta
Robert CravottaAlternative touch interfaces - sensor fusion
While trying to uncover and highlight different technologies that embedded developers can tap into to create innovative touch interfaces, Andrew commented on e-field technology and pointed to Freescale's sensors. While exploring proximity sensing for touch applications, I realized that accelerometers represent yet another alternative sensing technology (versus capacitive touch) that can impact how a user can interact with a device. More...
SDR 10: Wireless Innovation Conference & Exhibition
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Fundamentals of High Level Synthesis--Part 2
HLS bookOne of the most important features of HLS for tuning design performance is Loop Unrolling. However, it is necessary first to discuss what constitutes a "loop" in C++. Loops are the primary mechanism for applying high level synthesis constraints as well as moving data, or IO, into and out of an algorithm. The style in which loops are written can have a significant impact on the quality of results of the generated hardware. More...
A Practical Guide to Adopting the Universal Verification Methodology--Part 2
ARM adIn HDL, such as Verilog and VHDL, static elaboration of the instances hierarchy occurs before simulation starts. This ensures that all instances are in place and connected properly before run-time simulation. In SystemVerilog, classes are instantiated at run time. This raises a few questions: When is it safe to start traffic generation and execution? When is a good time to assume that all the UVC components have been created? and What TLM ports can be connected? More...
Optimizing Low Power Embedded Designs
graphicThe need for low power embedded designs has always been high motivated by the desire to run applications for as long as possible while consuming the minimum power. In a battery powered system, this need is magnified. Furthermore, in battery powered systems low power implies lower cost of operation and smaller battery size to make applications more mobile. When energy comes at a premium as it does with today's green initiatives, ensuring that an embedded design consumes as little energy as possible assumes significant importance in wall-powered applications as well. More...
September Wireless Update
 
ARM adLast week, Samsung Mobile Launched the Samsung Craft, the world's first commercially available 4G LTE handset. Specifically designed for the MetroPCS network, and initially available in the Las Vegas, Nevada area, the Craft is a multimode handset, with LTE data and CDMA voice and texting capability. The LTE modem is Samsung's own, based on CEVA DSP core technology, while the CDMA modem is from Qualcomm. It is a bit curious that Samsung chose not to employ the readily-available Qualcomm LTE modem. Perhaps Samsung likes the licensing terms better with its own LTE solution...or maybe they believe it is a better performer (after all, Samsung is getting up to 80 Mbps with that modem in Sweden). More...
How to Simplify the Design of an RF Remote Control
diagramThe most common remote controls use infrared (IR) technology because of the relatively low cost of IR components, but these IR-based controls suffer from many drawbacks including requiring line-of-sight pointing, limited operating angles, short transmission range, reflection problems and high current consumption associated with the IR LEDs, which leads to low battery life. RF remote controls resolve these issues and are appearing in greater numbers because consumers are demanding a much better user experience. More...
That's a brief look at what we have to offer--and we're adding more every day. Please check back with us regularly to get the latest news, tips and techniques for implementing green/low-power/RF designs.

Sincerely,
John Donovan
Editor/Publisher, Low-Power Design & Low-Power Wireless