August 19, 2015, Intel Developer Forum, San Francisco—Brad Saunders, architect/strategist, Bob Dunstan, principal engineer, and Rahman Issmail, USB senior architect at Intel presented design considerations and implementation details for the new Type C connector for the USB. The latest releases for USB enable greater connectivity to other protocols and provide power delivery. Currently, USB is…
September 16, 2014, Custom Integrated Circuits Conference, San Jose, CA—Tom Lee from Stanford talked about the events and efforts in making the first transatlantic telegraph cable and the resulting birth of electrical engineering. The disastrous beginnings would not have led anyone to think that electrical engineers to be capable of creating miracles. Today, we think…
September 16, 2014, Custom Integrated Circuits Conference, San Jose, CA—Jan Westra from Broadcom described their efforts in making a multi-channel 10Gbase-T chip. The alternative of copper over short distances can easily supplement the optical fiber for the rest of the 10G Ethernet network in the datacenter. One problem with copper is that the wire bundles…
October 5, 2013 – At the Screen in the Home conference held by the Santa Clara Valley IEEE Communication Society and Consumer Electronics Society, they had a presentation by RGB Network’s CTO and coFounder Yuval Fisher on Adaptive Bit Rate in the Broadcast marketplace. Adaptive bitrate is being used by VOD providers such as Hulu,…
October 5, 2013, IEEE Communications Society and Consumer Electronics Society, Santa Clara, CA—Michail Tsatsanis from Entropic talked about the silicon innovations that enable the next generation cable architecture. The cable systems are facing challenges due to the changes in their media mix. Now the cable is not just for delivering video to the TV, but…
June 25, 2013, PCI-SIG Developers’ Forum, Santa Clara, CA—The PCI special interest group is evolving their specifications to include more functions and interface modes. Al Yanes and Ramin Nechati from the PCI-SIG described the new features and specifications for PCI. The main technology is based on PCIe, and with the increasing focus on mobile, created…
March 18, 2013, NPD Flat-Panel Display Conference, San Jose, CA—Paul Gray from NPD DisplaySearch examined the forces at work that affect TVs, as mobile devices acquire television-like capabilities. The TV set manufacturers have been adding new features and functions like social media and Internet connectivity, but these efforts may be insufficient. The TV is no…
March 20, 2012, Over-the-top TV Conference, Santa Clara, CA—a panel considered the on-going commentary on the demise of cable and broadcast. Jeremy Toeman from Dijit Media moderated the panel. Panel members included Scott Mirer from Netflix, Colin Decker from the Virgin Group, and Richard Bullwinkle from Rovi. Cord cutting? Bullwinkle said this requires redefining service…