An off-the-shelf digital twin for software-defined vehicles

The complexity of vehicle hardware and software is rising at an unprecedented rate, so traditional development methodologies are no longer sufficient to manage system-level interdependencies among advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), autonomous…

Wide-range tunable RC Schmitt trigger oscillator

In this Design Idea (DI), the classic Schmitt-trigger-based RC oscillator is “hacked” and analyzed using the simulation software QSPICE. You might reasonably ask why one would do this, given that countless such circuits reliably and unobtrusively…

Enabling a variable output regulator to produce 0 volts? Caveat, designer!

For some time now, many of EDN’s Design Ideas (DIs) have dealt with ground-referenced, single-power-supplied voltage regulators whose outputs can be configured to produce zero or near-zero volts [1][2]. In this mode of operation, regulation…

Why memory swizzling is hidden tax on AI compute

Walk into any modern AI lab, data center, or autonomous vehicle development environment, and you’ll hear engineers talk endlessly about FLOPS, TOPS, sparsity, quantization, and model scaling laws. Those metrics dominate headlines and product…

Ignoring the regulator’s reference

DAC control (via PWM or other source) of regulators is a popular design topic here in editor Aalyia Shaukat’s Design Ideas (DIs) corner. There’s even a special aspect of this subject that frequently provokes enthusiastic and controversial…

Expanding power delivery in systems with USB PD 3.1

The Universal Serial Bus (USB) started out as a data interface, but it didn’t take long before progressing to powering devices. Initially, its maximum output was only 2.5 W; now, it can deliver up to 240 W over USB Type-C cables and connectors,…

Troubleshooting often involves conflicting symptoms and scenarios

I’ve always regarded debugging and troubleshooting as the most challenging of all hands-on engineering skills. It’s not formally taught; it is usually learned through hands-on experience (often the hard way) and almost every case is different.…

The Schiit Modi Multibit: A little wiggling ensures this DAC won’t quit

Sometimes, when an audio component dies, the root cause is something electrical. Other times, the issue instead ends up being fundamentally mechanical. Delta sigma modulation-based digital-to-analog conversion (DAC) circuitry dominates the modern…

Building automotive data logging with F-RAM flash combo

Advances in the automotive industry continue to make cars safer, more efficient, and more reliable than ever. As motor vehicles become more advanced, so do the silicon components that serve as the backbone of their advanced features. Case in…

Hardware security to bolster interconnect IPs for SoCs, chiplets

Hardware security vulnerabilities have greatly expanded the attack surface beyond traditional software exploits, making hardware security assurance crucial in modern system-on-chip (SoC) designs. Chip interconnect specialist Arteris’ acquisition…

Building high-performance robotic vision with GMSL

Robotic systems depend on advanced machine vision to perceive, navigate, and interact with their environment. As both the number and resolution of cameras grow, the demand for high-speed, low-latency links capable of transmitting and aggregating…

Low-power Wi-Fi 6 MCUs preserve IoT battery life

Renesas has announced the RA6W1 dual-band Wi-Fi 6 wireless MCU, to be followed by the RA6W2 Wi-Fi 6 and BLE combo MCU. Based on an Arm Cortex-M33 CPU running at 160 MHz, these low-power microcontrollers dynamically switch between 2.4-GHz and…