A holiday shopping guide for engineers: 2023 edition

As of this year, EDN has consecutively published my odes to holiday-excused consumerism for a half-decade straight: here are the 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 editions (I skipped a few years between the 2014 edition and its successors). As in the past, I’ve included up-front links to the prior-year versions because I’ve done my best here to not regurgitate any past product category recommendations; the stuff I’ve previously suggested largely remains valid, after all. That said, it gets harder and harder each year not to repeat myself!

Without any further ado, and ordered solely in the order in which they initially came out of my cranium…

Bite into the Raspberry Pi 5

After just telling you that I wasn’t going to repeat myself, I’m going to go back on what I said…sorta. Three years ago, I suggested you pick up a Raspberry Pi 4 development board, which I’d previously covered (as the latest addition to the generational product family) earlier that same year. The Raspberry Pi 4 had been introduced in June 2019, and I snagged a 4 GByte one as soon as available in early 2020…a good thing, as it turns out, because shortly thereafter the world plunged into pandemic lockdown and supply evaporated. What I could have resold my board for back then, if I’d been motivated to do so…what’s that expression, “greed is good”?

Thankfully, component supply has subsequently rebounded, leading to a tangible board assembly restart beginning earlier this year. At this point, in fact, availability has sufficiently rebounded that I occasionally even see current-generation boards (and kits based on them) on sale…and the Raspberry Pi Foundation is also now comfortable talking about next-generation offerings. I’m referring, of course, to the Raspberry Pi 5, unveiled in late September and scheduled to be available by the time you read this, priced at $60 (4GByte) and $80 (8GByte):

In transitioning from the Raspberry Pi 4’s Broadcom BCM2711 SoC, fabricated on a 24 nm process, to the next-generation 16 nm-based BCM2711, the Raspberry Pi 5 makes several notable architectural advancements, which are reflected in (among other things) significant early benchmark results (both absolute and relative):

A 64-bit CPU core cluster evolution from the quad-core Arm Cortex-A72 running at 1.5 GHz (later 1.8 GHz) to a quad-core 2.4 GHz Arm Cortex-A76 with 512KByte per-core L2 caches and a 2MByte shared L3 cache. Here’s how they compare, per Arm (PDF).
An upgraded GPU core, the VideoCore VII, developed by the Raspberry Pi Foundation
A subdivision of functions formerly integrated fully within the application processor (the BCM2711 in the case of the Raspberry Pi 4), now allocated between the BCM2712 and a separate Raspberry Pi Foundation-designed I/O chip, the RP1, fabricated on TSMC’s more mature (translation: cost-effective) 40LP process.
A new imaging signal processor (ISP), subdivided between the BMC2712 and RPI, and also designed by Raspberry Pi Foundation personnel.
A newly developed (by Renesas, with Raspberry Pi Foundation assistance) PMIC (power management IC), the DA9091, and
Tweaks to the board layout that obsolete some Hardware Attached on Top (HAT) add-on boards and open the doors to other new ones.

My Raspberry Pi 5 is on order, and hopefully it’ll be in hand by the time you all read this. One upfront heads-up; per early reviews, the board runs hot (in spite of its inherent higher efficiency versus its predecessor, apparently counterbalanced by higher performance) and the Active Cooler (or alternatively, a fan-inclusive case) should therefore generally be treated as a requirement, versus optional.

Learn from an NVIDIA Jetson Developer Kit

Back in November 2020, I did a writeup on Google’s various AIY (“Artificial-Intelligence-Yourself,” a play on DIY, i.e., “Do-It-Yourself) Project Kits, suggesting them as platform paths to learning more about deep learning and broader AI concepts. Three years later, I’m not exactly surprised to revisit the article, click through the various embedded links, and find inventory at Google’s various retail partners either depleted or accompanied by “Discontinued” notices. After all, deep learning and AI remain one of the hottest areas of technology innovation, in the process rapidly rendering existing silicon and software solutions obsolete.

To wit, sitting downstairs in storage is an NVIDIA Jetson TX1 developer kit, which my wife bought me in November 2017 (as a that-year Christmas present) for $500 and change from Newegg. Unfortunately, less than a year after I received it, NVIDIA issued an EOL notice on it, and further associated software development also ceased after the JetPack v3.3 toolset release at around that same time (as I type these words, the JetPack SDK is up to v5.1.2).

(I shudder to wonder what the fire extinguisher was doing sitting in-frame in that video)

That said…them’s the breaks, and that’s technology’s pace for you. The Tegra X1 SoC on which the Jetson TX1 was based was introduced nearly a decade ago at the January 2015 CES, after all, with the Jetson TX1 module (and broader-function developer board derived from it) following it that same November. And I can’t deny that, although plenty of other suppliers are gunning for NVIDIA’s current dominance in the space, if you do a Google search on “AI developer board” (or, if you prefer, “deep learning developer board”), the Jetson kit family is consistently at the top of the results list…along with Raspberry Pi boards, ironically, and Google’s AiY successor, Coral.

NVIDIA’s current developer kit lineup (again, as I type these words in mid-October; CES 2024 is coming up soon, after all) consists of three different offerings, with varying silicon foundations, periphery allotments, form factors, price points and the like:

Jetson Nano (~$199)
Jetson Orin Nano (shown below, ~$499), and
Jetson AGX Orin (~$1,999)

Kits are available for purchase both from NVIDIA’s own online store and from retail partners such as (but not limited to) Amazon.

Revisit some technology-tome classics

I don’t know about you, but I spend way too much time during an average day staring at way too many screens: computer monitors and laptop integrated displays, smartphones, tablets, e-book readers and the like, not to mention televisions. When I realize (often in conjunction with a splitting headache) that I’ve overdone it, it feels good to put all those electronics devices away for a while and instead curl up with a good book, both because the paper-based media is comforting and because doing so discourages even more headache-inducing multitasking.

Two years ago, I suggested you might want to subscribe to an engineering journal (or few). This time, I’m going to offer up a list of classic (IMHO, at least) technology-themed books, most (but not all) of which currently reside on my bookshelves or in my Kindle library. Some are oldie-but-goodies, others are more recently published, and the list that follows (ordered by primary author’s last name) certainly isn’t intended to be comprehensive, instead aligned with my personal tech interests. That all said, I think all of you will enjoy at least some of them. Wherever possible, BTW, I’ve linked to Wikipedia entries or generic Google searches for either book titles or authors. Regardless, don’t worry, any Amazon URLs here aren’t referral-tagged:

The Deal of the Century: The Breakup of AT&T by Steve Coll
The Pentium Chronicles: The People, Passion, and Politics Behind Intel’s Landmark Chips by Bob Colwell
Accidental Empires: How the Boys of Silicon Valley Make Their Millions, Battle Foreign Competition, and Still Can’t Get a Date by Robert X. Cringely (Mark Stephens)
Introduction to Computer Graphics and Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice by James Foley, Andries Van Dam et al
Fire in the Valley: The Making of the Personal Computer by Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine
Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach and Computer Organization and Design: The Hardware/Software Interface by John Hennessy and David Patterson
Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age by Michael Hiltzik
Hacking the Xbox and The Hardware Hacker by Andrew “bunnie” Huang
Steve Jobs and The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution by Walter Isaacson
The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder (quick aside: in retrospect, my first-of-many reads of this while in high school was seminal in cultivating my subsequent interest in computer and electrical engineering as an academic focus and, later, professional career)
The Art of Computer Programming by Donald Knuth
The Age of Intelligent Machines, The Age of Spiritual Machines and The Singularity is Near by Ray Kurzweil
Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution by Steven Levy
The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story by Michael Lewis
What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry by John Markoff and Takedown: The Pursuit and Capture of Kevin Mitnick, America’s Most Wanted Computer Outlaw — By the Man Who Did It by John Markoff and Tsutomu Shimomura
Computer Lib/Dream Machines by Ted Nelson (good luck finding a copy of this long out-of-print classic!)
Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software by Charles Petzold
The New Hacker’s Dictionary by Eric Raymond
The Chip: How Two Americans Invented the Microchip and Launched a Revolution by T.R. Reid
Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed by Ben Rich
Inside the Machine: An Illustrated Introduction to Microprocessors and Computer Architecture by Jon Stokes (editor note: co-founder of the Ars Technica website)
The Cuckoo’s Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage by Clifford Stoll

Suspend disbelief with some tech fiction

The classics that follow were originally in my previous list, which as you’ve already seen, got quite long. So, I decided to split out the works of fiction separately!

I, Robot by Isaac Asimov
Basically anything by Ray Bradbury (another heavy influence on me as a youth)
Microserfs by Douglas Coupland
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
Neuromancer by William Gibson
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

Bolster your business savvy

You’re a techie. I know. So am I. But amassing a critical mass of business intelligence is also critical to future career success, in my opinion, if only to be able to comprehend and effectively counter all the corporate-speak jargon the sales and marketing staffers and executives periodically spew at you ;-). Many of these are fairly old (“classics”, again) but I’d argue that the fundamentals of business success haven’t changed much (if at all) since then:

The Long Tail and Free: The Future of a Radical Price by Chris Anderson
The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail by Clayton Christensen
Marketing High Technology by Bill Davidow
Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making by Tony Fadell
Microcosm: The Quantum Revolution in Economics and Technology by George Gilder
Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell
High-Output Management and Only the Paranoid Survive by Andy Grove (I was handed both of these when, fresh out of college, I joined Intel back when Andy was still running the company)
Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers by Geoffrey Moore

Upgrade your video gear and skills

Last year, I suggested that you follow in my footsteps and pick up an “old school” film- or digital image sensor-based medium format still camera. This year, I’ll make a related recommendation, this time for video. First off, here’s what I wrote a year ago about my archaic film Pentax 67:

The seeming tedium necessary to operate it turned out to have a silver (halide?)-lining upside. The effort and expense necessary to capture just a single image forced me to be far more selective about what images I ended up capturing, which forced me to be much more aware than I otherwise might be about the beautiful scenery that I was moment-by-moment surrounded by…which led to a far richer appreciation for that scenery and my experiences in it.

And, of course, the payoff for all that effort and expense was a higher-than-average chance (compared to a conventional standalone camera or camera-inclusive smartphone) of a beautiful image, courtesy of the film’s huge negative size and the camera family’s quality “glass”. The same goes for my digital P645Z and its smaller size but 51+ Mpixel resolution CMOS sensor.

Now for video. Two years ago, I’d suggested you select from a variety of available gear options that’d enable you to cost-effectively capture 4K video. But earlier this year, regular readers may remember that I revealed I’d also gotten two 6K Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Cameras (BMPCCs):

Auto-exposure? Nope. Auto-focus? Nope again (at least dynamic…there is a focus assist button that’ll one-shot get you in the ballpark, but the camera won’t retain focus as you and/or what you’re filming move around until you push the button again or manual focus for yourself). Other auto-niceties? You already know the answer. But cost-effective? You bet; my BMPCC 6K G1 cost me less than $1,000 gently used, with the also-used G2 only a few hundred dollars more; they sell brand new for under $2,500 even in the G2’s built-in variable ND “Pro” variant. The BMPCCs use industry-standard, multi-sourced, widely available M43 (G1) and Canon EF (G2) mount lenses. And the resultant footage? Stunning; that is, if you take the time to learn about and implement fundamentals such as the Exposure Triangle (further augmented by variable neutral density filters I’ve acquired) and if you’re willing to manage focus and other settings yourself.

Reiterating what I wrote a year ago:

I realize that my perspective may be seen as archaic by some…after all, the foundational concept of owning any camera is seemingly viewed as increasingly anachronistic. And I’ve always been a believer in the well-known saying (among photographers, at least) that “the best camera is the one that’s with you”…which often means the smartphone in your pocket or purse. But if you’ve got an interest in capturing image memories and the disposable income to turn it into reality, I’d encourage you to follow in my acquisition footsteps. You won’t regret it.

Snag some speedy direct-attached external storage

This last suggestion is closely related to the one above it. High-resolution cameras, especially if you use RAW or still-high-bitrate visually lossless codecs to capture still images and video sequences with them, generate really big files. Initially storing those files therefore takes a really long time. And accessing them for editing and final rendering also takes a really long time, with non-productive read and subsequent write speeds often dominating the overall editing-session duration and actual image processing a comparatively small percentage of the total time taken.

Two years ago, I suggested you pick up a beefy NAS for all the computers and other devices on your network to simultaneously access and storage-share. I still stand by that recommendation today. And four years ago, I suggested you get a high-capacity HDD-based DAS (direct-attached storage) device to augment the built-in storage in each computer. This year I’m going to revisit that particular earlier recommendation with a twist, echoing something I said nine years ago: instead of HDDs, “go solid-state”.

Increasingly over time, flash memory is comparatively cost-effective at modest home-office DAS capacities versus the HDD alternative. And although the power and energy consumption comparison results are indeterminate, at least to some, solid state storage’s performance strengths (especially with random access-dominant usage patterns) are undeniable. For both my in-process Windows computer transitions and those planned for their MacOS-based counterparts, I’ve picked up three flash memory-based DASs, all of which I’m quite pleased with so far:

A gently used 1.92TB G-Technology G-Drive Pro off eBay:

An open-box Mercury Pro U.2 Dual from Other World Computing (OWC), along with two used (and eBay-sourced) OWC U2 ShuttleOne NVMe M.2 to 2.5-inch U.2 SSD adapters; each adapter arrived pre-populated with an also-used 2 TByte Crucial P5 Plus SSD:

And another OWC Mercury Pro U.2 Dual, this one used (and also eBay-sourced) and paired with two new-from-OWC U2 Shuttle quad NVMe M.2 to 3.5-inch U.2 SSD adapters, each mated with a 2 TByte WD BLACK SN750 SSD (one new from eBay, the other used from Amazon Warehouse; stand by for more on the latter one in a blog post next month):

While I don’t normally purchase already-used SSDs, the versus-new prices on these were irresistible, and I’ll be running them in software RAID 1 mode for mirrored redundancy in case one fails, anyway. As for the G-Technology G-Drive Pro, I honestly don’t know how its architecture is internally implemented, and system software doesn’t provide much insight:

but check out these preliminary results over a Thunderbolt 2 interface (in combination with an Apple TB3-to-TB2 adapter) to my early 2015 model Apple 13” Retina MacBook Pro:

Native Thunderbolt 3 would potentially be faster still; I’ll retest and report back after my Mac migrations are complete. And on that note, by the way, all three of these storage devices implement Intel’s “Alpine Ridge” first-generation TB3 chipset, which (as I discussed a couple of months ago) doesn’t also support USB-C, so I wouldn’t necessarily advocate any of them for a Windows-based computer user, for example. But regardless of whether you go with any of mine or their conceptually similar counterparts from other suppliers, I highly recommend one of ‘em.

While visions of oscilloscopes danced in their heads…

I’ve got plenty of additional presents-to-others-and/or-self ideas, but the point isn’t to write a book, so I’ll close here to preclude passing through 3,000 words. Upside: I’ve already got topics for next year’s edition! And speaking of books, I’m particularly curious to hear what classics are on your lists. Sound off in the comments, and happy holidays!

—Brian Dipert is the Editor-in-Chief of the Edge AI and Vision Alliance, and a Senior Analyst at BDTI and Editor-in-Chief of InsideDSP, the company’s online newsletter.

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A holiday shopping guide for engineers: 2023 edition

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