Opinion

Jeff Bier’s Impulse Response—Proprietary Algorithms Key for Embedded Processor Vendors

Earlier this year my colleagues and I did some crystal ball analysis and identified a number of key trends that we expect to shape the embedded processor market over the next decade. One of these is that we expect embedded processor companies to be increasingly differentiated by their ownership of proprietary algorithms. This may seem out of left field; what do processor companies have to do with proprietary algorithms?  Here’s our reasoning.  Processor prices are dropping, while processor Read more...

Jeff Bier’s Impulse Response—Power Nomads

You see them at trade shows, in seminars, in airports—sometimes even in your own office building.  They pace a room’s perimeter and scan its walls, eyes perpetually roving from floor to midline. They sneak behind counters and crawl under tables and thrust their hands into dark and cobwebby corners.  Who are these people?  And what do they want? They are the Laptop Power Nomads, and they are searching for the elusive wall outlet.  I count myself among them. I’ve often found myself in Read more...

Jeff Bier’s Impulse Response—Application Processor—Say What?

Recently I wrote about how the term “DSP” seems to be losing its cachet, and people are starting to use terms that are more application-specific. Instead of “DSP processors,” there are now “digital signal controllers,”  “multimedia processors,” and “video processors,” for example. These terms are fine with me.  But there’s one that really annoys me: “application processor.” “Application processor” is the term used for the processors in cell phones that do stuff other than the actual cell Read more...

Jeff Bier’s Impulse Response—Risky Business

If you were getting ready to buy a new high-end camcorder or a new car, chances are you’d spend some time reading independent reviews. Maybe you’d pick up a copy of Consumer Reports or Road and Track. Perhaps you’d scan Amazon.com for user evaluations.  Whatever. The point is, you probably wouldn’t just make your choice based on the vendor’s marketing claims, right?   Yet that’s exactly what some design engineers do when they choose a processing engine. My colleagues at BDTI and I were Read more...

Jeff Bier’s Impulse Response—“DSP” becomes ubiquitous, passé

When my partners and I founded BDTI back in the early 90’s, “DSP” was in the process of becoming both a hot technology and a widely used abbreviation. The abbreviation meant two distinct things: digital signal processing, and digital signal processor.  You could usually figure out which one was meant by the context, but in some ways they were interchangeable—if you were doing digital signal processing, you were probably doing it on a digital signal processor. Today, DSP (in both senses) is Read more...

Jeff Bier’s Impulse Response—Corporate Bureaucracy Blocks Innovation

As the president of a small company that frequently works with big companies, I am often frustrated by how long it takes to get from a handshake agreement to a signed contract. The process can be absurdly slow and painful, and that’s bad for business on both sides. As an example, BDTI was recently contacted by a big company that had an urgent high-priority project they needed our help with. We quickly reached a verbal agreement with the responsible manager there, and we were ready to start Read more...

Jeff Bier’s Impulse Response—¿Hola? ¿Hola? I Can’t Hear You Now.

I spent some time at the Mobile World Congress in Spain last month, where pretty much everyone involved in wireless technologies showed up. I am happy to report that there were some very cool new technologies demonstrated there, like Texas Instruments’ miniature video projector that may one day be incorporated into cell phones.  People were also chattering about fourth-generation (“4G”) cellular networks, which are (of course) supposed to yield cell networks that are faster and better than Read more...

Jeff Bier’s Impulse Response—How to Make Money in Video IP

Digital video is almost everywhere. And where it isn’t now, it soon will be.  As a result, the market for digital video intellectual property components—hardware, software, you name it—is wide open, with lots of opportunities for money-making.  And there are roughly five buzillion vendors jockeying for position within a highly fragmented field. You have companies like ARC and Tensilica offering programmable (and sometimes customizable) hardware-plus-software silicon IP solutions for chip Read more...

Jeff Bier’s Impulse Response: Moore’s Law Alive and Well—But Penalties Get Stiffer

The breathtaking advances in digital integrated circuits over the past 40 years—with current chips topping one billion transistors—have been possible in large part because designers and users have been able to ignore a number of “second-order” aspects of circuit behavior.  Unfortunately, as process geometries continue to shrink, some of those second-order effects have been promoted to first-order headaches. Take leakage current. It used to be one of those second-order effects that most Read more...

Jeff Bier’s Impulse Response—Embedded Processor Wars

For a while there, it seemed as though DSP processors and general-purpose processors (GPPs) were morphing into one another. In an effort to provide better DSP performance, general-purpose processors (GPPs) were incorporating increasingly powerful DSP-oriented features. Meanwhile, as digital signal processing applications got more complex, DSP processors were becoming more CPU-like to enable efficient compilers and support more elaborate operating systems. It was getting hard to tell the DSPs Read more...