Eat, Write, Dance… Create

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Gary Hilson, September 2013I eat, write and dance, but not necessarily in that order. I spend most of my time creating.

I write. A lot. In many formats.  My specialty is taking complex concepts and translating them into plain language for target audiences with flair and creativity built on a foundation of journalism and an out-of-this-world imagination with a dash of project management.

I eat, so I find it helps to enjoy cooking. I’m not a gourmet chef, but I will knock your socks off with a slow cooker or casserole recipe. I generally follow a Paleo diet.

Rehearsing and performing this fox trot is one of the best experiences of my life.

Here I showcase my work and blog a little about everything and anything, including recipes, Lego construction, comic books and the odd rant about something or other. I am an amateur photographer and aspiring author.

You can e-mail me, if you like.

Flash File Fragmentation Needs A Fix for Automotive [Portfolio]

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Gone are the days of having to manually defrag your hard drive because it’s done automatically, and flash doesn’t experience file fragmentation. Or does it?

It may be that your smartphone is running slow because it can’t keep up with software updates and bloating, but that its flash storage is experiencing file fragmentation. Joel Catala, director of Embedded Solutions at Tuxera, said that contrary to popular belief, fragmentation can significantly affect performance of a flash device. Recent research suggests that as flash storage hardware gets faster, the software I/O stack overhead is an I/O performance bottleneck, he said in a telephone interview with EE Times. It’s not the flash or the controller responsible for the bottleneck.

Read the full EE Time story.

Face the cybercrime prevention challenges of 2018 head-on [Portfolio]

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Last year was the worst year to date for cyber attacks, but many predict 2018 will be even worse.

Given how 2018 is going so far, that’s not hard to believe. The frequency of high-profile breaches is only increasing, and the payouts hackers enjoy are getting bigger. In an environment where cybercrime prevention can feel like a losing battle, how can you help your company stay secure?

Read the full story on Tektonika.

DRAM Boom and Bust is Business as Usual [Portfolio]

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oom or bust. It’s long been the cycle for established memory technologies. As 3D NAND pricing softens, DRAM still appears to be going strong. But for how long? And will these ups and downs always be the norm despite diversified demand and emerging vendors from China?

One key characteristic of the DRAM market is that there are currently only three major suppliers — Micron Technology, SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics.

“They’re keeping a pretty tight rein on their capacity,” said Brian Matas, vice president of market research at IC Insights, said in a telephone interview with EE Times. “And at the same time, there’s also pretty strong demand for higher performance and higher-density parts, particularly from the data center and server applications.”

Read my EE Times story.

Adesto Touts ReRAM for Automotive [Portfolio]

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With the automotive market presenting potential opportunities of ever-emerging memories such as ferroelectric RAM (FRAM), magnetoresistive RAM (MRAM), and resistive RAM (ReRAM), Adesto Technologies is working hard to make sure that the latter makes the grade.

It recently unveiled new research demonstrating the potential of ReRAM for high-reliability applications such as automotive. The research was led by Adesto Fellow Dr. John Jameson, who shared the results at the ESSCIRC-ESSDERC 48th European Solid-State Device Research Conference earlier this month, and indicates that ReRAM could become a widely used, low-cost, and simple embedded non-volatile memory (eNVM) because it uses simple cell structures and materials that can be integrated into existing manufacturing flows with as little as one additional mask.

Read my latest for EE Times.

New Uses Vie for GDDR6 Supply [Portfolio]

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TORONTO — The “G” still stands for “graphics,” but new use cases driving the need for GDDR memory technology have nothing to do with pixels.

In fact, applications such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, which need ultra-fast memories, have shorted gamers of their GDDR supply, so it’s probably a good idea that makers of the technology are ramping up delivery. Micron Technology recently began volume production of its 8-Gb GDDR6 memory, which, of course, is aimed at the graphics market but also automotive and networking segments.

Some of the emerging uses cases for GDDR memory are still graphics-driven. In the growing automotive memory market, it’s to support increasingly visual dashboards and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) that must be responsive to a driver’s actions immediately, while autonomous vehicles need high-performance memory to process the vast amounts of real-time data. Other emerging applications include augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR). Finally, video is always hungry for memory as 4K gets more widely adopted and 8K nips at its heels.

Read my full story on EE Times. 

Intel’s 3D XPoint Plans Clearer Than Micron’s [Portfolio]

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TORONTO — What the future holds for 3D XPoint — now that Intel and Micron have announced plans to end their joint development program — depends on who you talk to.

Or who you don’t talk to. Micron, for its part, isn’t offering any more guidance right now beyond what was stated in a joint news release issued earlier this week. “The companies have agreed to complete joint development for the second generation of 3D XPoint technology, which is expected to occur in the first half of 2019,” the statement reads. “Technology development beyond the second generation of 3D XPoint technology will be pursued independently by the two companies in order to optimize the technology for their respective product and business needs.”

Intel is still bullish on the technology. In a telephone interview with EE Times, Bill Leszinske, vice president of Intel’s non-volatile memory solutions group, said it makes sense for Intel to continue on its present path.

Read my full EE Times story

 

 

 

NOR Flash is Road Tested [Portfolio]

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TORONTO — As cars get smarter and demand more memory, many technologies are angling for the driver’s seat, but it’s safe to say NOR flash at least gets to ride shotgun.

As a successor to EEPROM in many applications thanks to its programmability capabilities, NOR flash is finding new opportunities in application areas that need fast, non-volatile memory, including communications, industrial and automotive. The latter, of course, is getting a lot of attention thanks to autonomous vehicle development.

Macronix International, which describes itself as the leading supplier of NOR flash overall, find itself in the third position for automotive. But Anthony Le, senior director of marketing, ecosystem partnership and North America automotive, said the company is confident it will lead that segment in the next two to three years.

Read the full story on EE Times.

Ready to get on board with the Cybersecurity Tech Accord? [Portfolio]

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You may think it’s your time to relax after breaking your back to meet all the requirements of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), but hackers never sleep. If you want to keep them out, you need to stay up to date on the latest and greatest cybersecurity regulations. That said, have you heard about the Cybersecurity Tech Accord?

Generally, cybersecurity regulation is a set of rules laid out by governing bodies that ends up adding to your to-do list. But instead of coming from a government, the Cybersecurity Tech Accord is driven by 34 of the world’s largest international companies.

Read the full article.

Legacy IT is dampening fintech disruption in Canada [Portfolio]

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As fintech disruption in Canada heightens speculation of what the future holds for traditional financial institutions, most of the attention is being focused on what’s keeping banks from transforming how they serve customers. UX is everything after all, especially with millennials dropping banks left and right.

Fintech disruption in Canada fumbles More recently, legacy technology has been identified as the culprit, as it impedes the ability of banks to adapt.

Read my full article on Tektonika.

The future of sustainable business requires greener IT [Portfolio]

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Today, IT procurement must take the entire lifecycle of hardware into account, and there’s increasing pressure to make sure the supply chain you’re purchasing from is also green and ethical. To attain a future of sustainability, everyone must do their part, but the question is: How can your business do its part without adding to the many pressures already on your IT staff?

Read my full article on Tektonika.