The Only Constant Is Change

Those of you who have been paying close attention and who read my last editorial must be wondering why I'm writing this one. My last editorial was my supposed swan song at In-Stat/MDR and Microprocessor Report. Well, after almost four months at a startup, I'm back, and I'm editor in chief of Microprocessor Report. My return is a good news/bad news story. The good news (for me at least) is that I'm glad to be back at In-Stat/MDR and writing for Microprocessor Report. It's also another opportunity to contribute to the microprocessor community in the best way I know how. The bad news is that my return is due to the departure of Peter Glaskowsky. Peter was a long-time and valued contributor to MDR, and he will be missed here.

I consider being Microprocessor Report's editor in chief a great honor and a great responsibility. I was recently talking to the CEO of a major Silicon Valley chip company and he told me how much he values the in-depth and impartial content of Microprocessor Report and that he reads it on a regular basis, mostly on planes. (In fact, MPR seems to be the reading material of choice for many subscribers on airline trips. Maybe we should publish airline schedules in the report for even greater utility.)

My goal is to make our content even more relevant as the microprocessor industry tackles the challenges of complex system-on-chip (SoC) designs, 90nm and smaller geometries, intellectual property (IP) use and reuse, the rise of untethered computing, and many other issues. This is a very dynamic industry, and MDR must change to continue to be of value to it.

Over the next few months you can expect to see some changes here. But we will not lose our staunch independence and objectivity, although they will not prevent us from getting excited when we find a company or product or technology we think is really significant.

Some of these changes will be seen at the Embedded Processor Forum, which is fast approaching as I write this. Because microprocessors do not work without software, we have an EPF04 session on software technologies that includes an intriguing presentation from Transitive Technology, which claims its software will allow any processor to run instructions from another instruction set.

We also recognize that the embedded market (except for most x86 processors) has moved to SoC designs, and that connecting the various cores on the die is as significant a challenge as designing the cores themselves. At EPF04, on Wednesday afternoon, we have a panel covering on-chip buses, addressing both licensable IP and proprietary solutions. Chip designers must decide where to invest their limited resources in designing interfaces and when they would be better off licensing existing technology. Much like the trade-off SoC designers face with IP cores, the system bus can be licensed, or it can be designed in house. But the system bus is often even more critical, because, as the backbone of the SoC processor, it must connect various IP blocks and, ideally, should be scalable for the future. The panel will be moderated by a new addition to MDR's staff but a returning veteran of In-Stat, Jim McGregor. Jim brings additional systems expertise to MDR as well as having an established background in research.

I will be opening EPF04 and moderating the Tuesday session on high-performance embedded processors. We will have presentations from ARM, Motorola/Freescale, PMC-Sierra, and VIA. As usual, we have representatives from all the key embedded instruction set architectures and most of the important vendors. I hope to see you there.

I'm very excited to be back at MDR and Microprocessor Report, and I hope I can count on you, our readers, for your continued support. I also hope we can tap into your collective wisdom and knowledge to help make this newsletter an essential part of your business.