From the Editor

What would you do with $7 billion? Acquire AMD two times over? Buy a Caribbean island? If you’re Intel, you blow the cash on antivirus software – lots of it. Intel’s pending acquisition of McAfee shows that the chip company is dead serious about adding security features to its chips. It’s a new way for Intel to differentiate itself from everybody else, and it doesn’t depend on clock speeds, power consumption, or software compatibility.

We've extended the deadline for the final Journal Forum Posting competition. Post something creative and you could walk away with the final $500 amazon.com gift certificate! 

Thanks as always for reading. We encourage you to share your thoughts in the new easier-to-use comments area right below the articles; don't be shy. Or you can get a lively discussion going on our FORUMS.

Jim Turley - Editor, Embedded Technology Journal


Industry News

September 03, 2010

LPI Launches Certified Solution Provider Program

New I/O Modules Provide Two CAN Bus Interface Channels for Industrial PCs and Embedded Systems

Cypress Adds New Programmable Peripherals for PSoC® 3 and PSoC 5 Architectures with Latest Release of PSoC Creator™ Design Environment

September 02, 2010

Cambridge Wireless is discussing ‘Sensing from Radio’

Curtiss-Wright Controls Debuts its First VPX Single-Slot Physical Layer Switch

September 01, 2010

ITTIA DB SQL Delivers Advanced Sharing and Transactions for Embedded Data

TenAsys® INtime® Keeps Time with Music in Corevalus’ new Audio Mixing Station

Tiny Low Frequency Clock Chip Supports Long Duration Timing from 1ms to 9.5hrs

Curtiss-Wright Controls Introduces Dual Mezzanine Card Subsystem

austriamicrosystems announces a low-power, 2.4 GHz multi-channel FSK transceiver with built-in star network manager

August 31, 2010

Dialog Semiconductor's power management IC and audio codec adopted by Renesas Electronics' SH7724 mobile device platform

Micro Digital Offers Full USB WiFi Support

Adeneo Embedded Releases Microsoft Windows Embedded Compact 7 Board Support Packages for NXP MCUs

August 30, 2010

2A, 42V Boost Converter Now Offered in High Temperature "H" & "MP" Grades

New Cypress CapSense® Express™ Controller is World’s Easiest-to-Implement Capacitive Touch Sensing Solution

ALi Announces Set-Top Box Chipsets Supporting Advanced Security at IBC

August 27, 2010

Learn how to quickly and easily parallelize your embedded multicore programs at ESC Boston

August 26, 2010

MAZeT presents simulation tools for optical measuring tasks

Renesas Electronics Introduces Three New Power MOSFET Products that Realize High-Efficiency DC/DC Converters

August 25, 2010

Microsoft Research uses Lyrtech SFF SDR development platform for experimental ‘white space’ device

Feature Articles

Intel Buys Its Own Caribbean Island

by Jim Turley

Last week Intel opened its sizable checkbook and offered to buy McAfee for $7.68 billion. And the world replied, WTF?

Seven billion, six-hundred-and-eighty million dollars is a big steaming pile of cash, no matter who you are. That’s Caribbean-island-with-gold-plated-faucets kind of money. Buying AMD would have been cheaper (though illegal). It’s as much capital as Microchip and NXP put together. It’s more cash than Xilinx or Altera is worth. It’s less money than NASA spent to go to the moon—seven times. You can buy Central American governments for that kind of money.

It’s also the largest acquisition, by far, that Intel has attempted in its 42-year history. By my reckoning, Intel has acquired more than 60 different companies over the years, but rarely paying more than a few hundred million. Last year’s acquisition of Wind River was a big one, at $884 million, but that’s still an order of magnitude cheaper than McAfee. This one purchase alone will cost almost half as much as all the others put together.  Read More


What would you do with $7 billion?

Jim Turley looked at Intel's answer (click here). What do you think?
Posted on 08/31/10 at 1:17 PM
by: kevin

AMD Bobcat vs Intel Atom

Jim Turley compared two x86 embedded processors (click here). What do you think?
Posted on 08/25/10 at 12:35 PM
by: kevin

Two sidenotes: 1. Current Int

Two sidenotes:

1. Current Intel Atom (Pineview) also integrate graphics.
I'm not sure whether it is in the same package or on the same die.
See http://images.dailytech.com/nimage/13141_large_DT%20Atom2.JPG

2. Intel tried to sell the Atom as IP blo...
Posted on 08/24/10 at 7:30 PM
by: Bianco Zandbergen

The Maybe Gate

Jim Turley told us about the Maybe Gate (click here). What do you think?
Posted on 08/17/10 at 12:21 PM
by: kevin

Self-powered components

Dick Selwood looked at self-powered embedded components (click here). What do you think?
Posted on 08/12/10 at 3:32 PM
by: kevin

Well, the PowerPC does have its

Well, the PowerPC does have its downside. As Linus said, "The memory management on the PowerPC can be used to frighten small children" and I can attest from personal experience that it's pretty scary for adult programmers too. Just getting it to do DMA ...
Posted on 08/04/10 at 9:02 PM
by: mrltm

Stretch's Secret

Jim Turley looks at the secret behind Stretch technology (click here). What do you think?
Posted on 08/04/10 at 3:04 PM
by: kevin

PowerPC Architecture

Jim Turley looked back at twenty years of PowerPC progress. (click here)

What do you think?
Posted on 07/29/10 at 1:27 PM
by: kevin

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