Welcome to Altera’s symposium on electronic system design. With these articles, we hope to bring you the latest thinking on the key challenges in the real world: defining system requirements, making architectural decisions, planning for implementation and—especially—verification, and estimating and measuring system performance. We will also offer you occasional reporting on industry events. We intend to cover a wide range of applications, system architectures, and implementation strategies, not limited to FPGA-based approaches or to the views of a particular set of vendors. That means we need your suggestions and article ideas. So if you’d like to browse, read an article in depth, , or write an article yourself for the symposium, please feel welcome. Thanks for your time!
A Clearing Picture of the Internet of Things
As IT- industry giants engage with the Internet of Things, both the structure and the purpose of the ubiquitous network concept are changing....More
IP Quality Means Something Different if You Are Making Changes
Often designers want to modify industry-standard I/O interfaces in their systems. This desire can profoundly change the process of selecting silicon intellectual property, and indeed, the concept of IP quality....More
Memory Bandwidth Takes Center Stage at Hot Chips Conference
The 25th Hot Chips Conference illustrated architects continuing struggle to get enough memory bandwidth for their multicore SoCs. A consensus is gradually forming about a new way forward....More
The Third Decade: The FPGA as SoC
In this third article of the Altera’s 30th Anniversary series, we see the dawn of Altera's FPGA as system on chip....More
FinFETs, Analog Circuits, and Your Next System Design
A DAC panel on the challenges of analog design with FinFETs provides a window through which we can glimpse the implications of these new transistors—not just for chip designers, but for system designers as well...More
Powering SoCs: Where Do the Regulators Go?
As SoCs have grown more complex, inclusive, and energy-conscious, the challenge of supplying power to them has grown more complex. Today the SoC or FPGA designer and the user must work through a number of significant decisions about who will regulate...More
System Design in the Real World
This article discussed what actually happens when system requirements change, the framework that applies to real-world designs, suggestions on what the design process should be, and how to make it better....More
Functional Safety Certification for Subsystem Developers
This article gives a brief overview of the functional safety requirements under the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) standards for subsystem developers and the trends in functional safety....More
From Glue Logic to Subsystem: Altera's Second Decade
In this second article in the Altera’s 30th Anniversary series, we see Altera expanding from CPLDs to FPGAs, and adapting to a world of RTL design, IP reuse, and CPU-based subsystems....More
The TV Studio Becomes a System
While the basic functions of the studio remain unchanged since the days of Walter Cronkite, the way these functions are implemented and the architectures in which they reside are all in directed turmoil....More
Looking Inside Scanned-Array Radar Signal Processing
In this article, we will outline an advanced scanned-array radar, and explore its architecture from the points of view of both seasoned radar signal processing experts and more traditional embedded-system designers....More
A Network for the Smart Grid
The Smart Grid will take the international power network from a collection of regional monitors and local electromechanical controls into an unknown new world of real-time, software-defined networks. In this article we will look at one piece of... ...More
In the Beginning
In the racing time-scale of technology, 30 years can seem imponderably long. TCP/IP became the official protocol of the ARPANET—there was, as yet, no Internet. IBM introduced the PC-XT—hard disks on personal computers were still in the future. ...More
Analyzing the Options in High-Bandwidth System Interconnect—or, Serial: It’s Not Just for Breakfast
With advanced silicon process technology, high-speed serial interconnect interfaces have become small enough, and the data rates high enough, that multi-Gbps serial links are replacing parallel buses, and even asynchronous I/Os, in many systems....More
Signal Conditioning for the Digital Guy
This article is an introduction to signal processing in embedded systems for digital designers without a signal-processing background. It starts with revisiting key topics from signal theory and the digital processing domain to help you evaluate......More
Cognitive Radio, Cognitive Everything
Cognitive radio (CR) has evolved from research topic, through classified intelligence and military applications, to an accepted technique in wireless networking. Today it stands on the threshold of much wider deployment: as a fundamental part in each...More
The Era of 20 nm Systems Approaches
Perhaps no semiconductor process has generated more controversy—before a single product has been shipped—than the 20 nm node....More
From Multicore to Many-Core: Architectures and Lessons
As several presentations at August’s Hot Chips Conference make clear, multicore is becoming many-core: the number of processor cores closely coupled at the hearts of SoCs is rising from 2 or 4 to 8, 16, or many, many more....More
The Cloud, Big Data, and Your Next System Design
One of the unpleasant truths of engineering: all system design is influenced—however irrationally—by the dominant paradigm in business computing. Sometimes this truth is a sad one. Sometimes it opens the door to a new era of system architecture....More
DRAM Controllers for System Designers
The DRAM controller can make the difference between a system that meets requirements and one that runs too slow, overheats, or fails. Ultimately the system design team—often with little access to controller information—bears the responsibility....More
What Your SoC Designer Might Not Tell You About Power Management
System designers must understand the interactions between on-chip power-management processes and the rest of the system, or they may find that trying to save power can lead to lowered efficiency or even serious malfunctions....More
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ARM Extends Toward a Future of Low-Power System Design
ARM Extends Toward a Future of Low-Power System Design...More
System Modeling Goes Mainstream
The roots of system modeling technology are in the IC design and aerospace industries. But today’s system designers in many areas find that they must model their electronic system designs long before it is feasible to build a full prototype....More
Designing Observability into SoC-Based Systems
Designing Observability into SoC-Based Systems...More
Automotive Electronic Systems—a View of the Future
Automotive Electronic Systems—a View of the Future...More
Cutting Through the Fog—The Road Ahead for Vehicular Radar
As the role of radar expands, radar transceivers, signal processing, and the hazard-avoidance automation they enable will make vehicle ADAS systems look increasingly like the tactical systems on combat aircraft....More
3D ICs and System Design
The introduction of 3D IC technology into electronic systems will bring major benefits, but it promises to be a slow, difficult process that will eventually cause major changes to system design....More
Security for Embedded Systems: Today’s Issue, Not Tomorrow’s
In his DesignWest keynote, Mocana senior analyst Robert Vamosi enthralled his audience with tales of bold attacks, grave threats, lame responses, and hope for the future. His subject? The conflict between hackers and embedded-system developers....More
Provisioning Analog I/O in Configurable Systems
The evolution of embedded systems has taken a new direction with the appearance of what we, at Missing Link Electronics, are calling Smart Products. This term borrows meaning from the recently-coined word Smartphone...More
FPGAs in 2032: The ACM FPGA 2012 Workshop
The Association for Computing Machinery 20th International Symposium on FPGAs began this year with a workshop on the imponderable: what FPGAs would be like in 20 years....More
Processing Options For Implementing Vision Capabilities in Embedded Systems
With the emergence of increasingly capable processors, image sensors, memories and other semiconductor devices, along with associated algorithms, it's becoming practical to incorporate computer vision capabilities into a wide range of embedded system...More
The Challenges are Changing for System Design
As process technology pushes forward from 40 to 28 nm, unavoidable scaling effects are changing the electrical characteristics of the basic elements—the transistors and interconnect wires—with which chip designers must work...More
