The Impact of Hewlett and Packard
April 20th, 2008 by Eric Starkloff
I just finished reading the book Bill and Dave: How Hewlett and Packard Built the World’s Greatest Company. Its a good read that focuses on the personal story of how two engineers built the most successful high technology company of their generation. Its also a good reminder of how much Hewlett and Packard laid the groundwork for the current generation of technology companies. Among other things, they pioneered “Flex-time”, the “Open Door” policy, “Management by Walking Around”, profit sharing, employee stock purchase plans, casual Fridays, “10% time” MBOs, company barbecues, and the cubicle (but don’t hold that last one against them!). All of us in the technology field owe a lot to those two pioneers.
A Blog on Smog
March 11th, 2008 by Eric Starkloff
Last week, I was in China for a conference. The economy continues to boom there; its amazing to see how much has changed since my last trip just two years ago. The skyline in Shanghai has grown immeasurably, the piracy and knock off brands have been pushed ‘underground’ (though, its still pretty easy to get a fake Rolex), and the evidence of China’s growing middle class is apparent - its almost as easy to get a real Rolex now at the many upscale shops around town. But one of the most pronounced changes is the growing pollution in Shanghai and Beijing. I only flew through Beijing, but I couldn’t even see the terminal from our plane as we taxied in. As one of my colleagues noted, you could look right at the sun, which was only a soft glow behind the yellow smog. Shanghai wasn’t quite as bad, but as we drove into the city, we all noticed our sinuses clogging and a distinct itch in the back of our throats. Another colleague attempted to take a jog in the city, but gave up after a few blocks.
So that raises the question that everyone has been asking: How is Beijing going to host the world’s premier athletic competition in a mere few months? The Chinese have instituted a decade long plan to clean up Beijing’s air, but opinions vary on how well it has worked so far (and my experience last week would suggest that it hasn’t). There are also more drastic contingencies planned, such as shutting down factories, restricting automobiles, and even seeding clouds to force rain, in an effort to “cleanse the air”. Some athlete’s aren’t so confident - one of the world’s premier marathon runners today announced that he may pull out of the Olympic due to health concerns related to the pollution.
So what’s the long term solution to the pollution in China and elsewhere around the world? Probably not restricting traffic or seeding clouds. The problem will be ultimately solved through consumer demand and engineering innovation, or green engineering . Consumer demand is what is causing the huge uptick in green products and corporate sustainability plans. Sure, there is a lot of hype out there (now called “Greenwashing“), but the net effect of all the focus on environmental sensitivity is a positive one. Even more sustainable are the discoveries and innovations in the scientific and engineering community. China’s pollution, for example, is primarily the result of coal power plants (a new plant opens in China every week to 10 days) and automobiles. Both of these industries are seeing huge investments in research to fund cleaner, more sustainable alternatives. The global investments in renewable energy reached $100B in 2006 and its projected to grow to more than $750B in the next 10 years. Research abounds in more efficient solar, wind, and even wave energy production. There is also a large investment in researching and productizing alternative fuel and zero emissions vehicles. We don’t yet know which of these innovations will prove most successful, but innovation, combined with a capitalistic system which rewards it, will ultimately triumph. Its only a matter of time before these inventions are not just a novelty, but a economically sustainable business delivering zero emissions but also better performance and lower cost of ownership than their fossil fuel predecessors. It might not be in time for the Beijing Olympics, but hopefully it will be in time to clean the air for the next generation of China’s urban population.
The New Wireless Internet
February 22nd, 2008 by Eric Starkloff
Wireless mobile devices will fundamentally change the way we use and interact with the Internet. As I’ve posted before, I am a unabashed iPhone user. And I’ve started to notice some curious things about my use of the Internet now that its with me all the time and easily accessible. For one, my Internet usage has gone up by an order of magnitude. I don’t think I’m exaggerating - I literally mean 10x. And let’s be clear, I was already a heavy Internet user. Now I use it 10 times more. This also means I access the Internet on my phone at least 10 times more than I do on my PC. I’ve grown so accustomed to the device that I find myself surfing the web on it while sitting in front of my laptop. I have also noticed that my expectations for Internet content has changed. For example, my expectation for real time content has gone up dramitically. I check news sites like cnn.com several times each hour and expect news updates. No new headlines in the last 20 minutes? Maybe I should try another site. I also notice that I use the device to augment my own knowledge on the fly by searching acronyms, names, etc., while in conversation or in a meeting. I don’t think I’m at all alone in this trend: Google recently reported that 50 times more traffic from iPhone users than from other mobile devices. Think about that - 50 times! When you make a tool like Google more accessible, dramatic things can happen. I’ve also talked to several colleagues (NI has a density of iPhone users that I doubt is topped anywhere outside of Cupertino), and they report a similar phenomena.
So, the question is, what is driving this change? I think first and foremost, we’re starting to really see the impact of ubiquitous wireless connectivity. The iPhone happened to make the full Internet available in way that is as good or better than the experience on the PC. Once the Internet makes the jump to wireless devices, the dynamic of the Internet will really change. The PC will quickly become irrelevant as an Internet device - the number of mobile devices (>1 billion per year) dwarfs the number of PCs (about 250 million per year). As Bolaji Ojo of EEtimes recently stated in his article Wireless is everywhere, ignore it at your peril, “the search is over for the next killer app…it is wireless”.
As an extension of my own personal iPhone observations, I think the new wireless Internet will have some of the following attributes:
- Usage an order of magnitude greater than the current web;
- Significantly increased demand for real time information;
- A two way communication portal, not just an information source (Web 2.0);
- Optimized primarily for mobile devices, not PCs.
It will get even more interesting as the wireless data bandwidth explodes with standards such as WiMAX and LTE. 2008 should be a fascinating year for wireless, particularly, the wireless Internet.
Trend# 5: Emulation-Based ATE That Improves SoC & SiP Testing
February 11th, 2008 by Eric Starkloff
OK, time for the last of my 5 trends in test for 2008:
Emulation-Based ATE That Improves System-on-a-Chip and System-in-a-Package Testing
As semiconductor devices become more complex, the process of testing each part completely with a traditional vector-based methodology is increasingly difficult. Complex systems-on-a-chip (SoCs) and systems-in-a-package (SiPs) require a system-level functional test more closely related to testing components placed on a printed circuit board than a typical chip test, but they still require the high speeds demanded in production test for the semiconductor industry. The strategy of testing a device by emulating actual real-world signals provides a better method of functional test for these types of high-speed systems. This emulation-based ATE, or also termed “Protocol-Aware ATE” during last year’s International Test Conference, combines FPGA-based hardware to emulate the rest of the system in real-time with the pin electronics found in traditional ATE. This lowers the total cost of test through better use-case coverage and improves the user’s ability to debug failures. I explained this idea in more detail in a recent blog post. In 2008, I expect more vendors to incorporate elements of emulation-based tests into traditional tester architectures and for more users to incoproate platforms currently used in functional test, such as PXI, into chip validation and test applications.
Trend# 4: The Explosion of Wireless Standards
February 5th, 2008 by Eric Starkloff
As I stated in an earlier blog post, I’m planning to discuss one of five industry trends per blog entry over the next few weeks. My 4th trend is:
The Explosion of Wireless Standards
Test engineers are facing new challenges as the use of wireless technolgies is rapidly expanding. This was a hot topic during the recent CES 2008 conference. One article covering CES, stated “Today’s young people might be called the wired generation, but judging from this year’s Consumer Electronics Show they might not have to deal with actual wires for much longer.” Below are few examples of products that have traditionally been “wired”, but are now becoming “wireless” devices:
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- Apple Time Capsule, which is a 1 terabyte wireless hard-drive using 802.11n.
- GM Vehicle-to-Vehicle technology, cars are becoming wireless network that can broadcast position, speed, heading to surrounding cars.
- Samsung flat-panel wireless TV, that receives its data from an 802.11n transmitte
As Wireless transitions from a vertical industry into a horizontal application, more and more test engineers will be faced with the challenge of testing RF wireless capability. Soon, RF instrumentation could become as ubiquitous as general-purpose instruments such as digital multimeters. This growth in adoption requires test engineers to learn wireless protocols and keep pace with the rapid introduction of new standards. This trend was reflected in the 2007 Test & Measurement World Salary Survey (which I blogged about late last year), in which subscribers across engineering disciplines were asked to identify the top technologies they are being required to learn. Among the top responses were WLAN and WiMax.An additional challenge as wireless becomes ubiquitous on high volume consumer devices, is that manufacturers must optimize the throughput of test systems. When a low cost music player adds wireless capability, for example, the test system, which now must include RF test equipment, can’t add significant cost to the product. Keeping up with these demands requires an RF platform optimized for throughput and cost.
Trend# 3: Growing Popularity of FPGA-Enabled Instrumentation
January 28th, 2008 by Eric Starkloff
As I stated in an earlier blog post, I’m planning to discuss one of five industry trends per blog entry over the next few weeks. My 3rd trend is:
Growing Popularity of FPGA-Enabled Instrumentation
Another area experiencing rapid expansion in the test industry is the increase in system-level tools for field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). FPGAs are powerful because they are inherently parallel, deterministic, and reliable and can be defined and reconfigured in software. While FPGAs are used inside many embedded designs, and even standalone instruments, users are not typically given access to reprogram them. More manufacturers are beginning to include open FPGAs on modular instruments and are giving test engineers the means in software to reprogram them according to their requirements. With this capability, test engineers can embed a custom algorithm into the device to perform in-line processing inside the FPGA or emulate part of the system that requires a real-time response. Historically, most test engineers do not have expertise to program FPGAs because they familiarity with hardware description languages like Verilog or VHDL which use low-level syntax to describe hardware behavior. New system-level tools are emerging that provide test engineers with the ability to rapidly configure FPGAs without writing low-level HDL code. LabVIEW, for example, can target onboard FPGAs and synthesize the necessary hardware directly from a graphical LabVIEW program, dramatically reducing the complexity of the code development. I’ve been amazed at the things our customers, who are often domain exprerts, but not experts in hardware design, have been able to accomplish with LabVIEW FPGA. Examples include testing RFID devices performing bit-error-rate testing (BERT) of military communication protocols.