New 8-bit microcontrollers continue to reach upward in features and performance—reaching 100 MIPS—and 32-bit processors keep pushing downward in performance and cost (see sidebar “Squeezing the 16-bit ...

Will Strauss, president of Forward Concepts, said Freescale's move is part of a larger trend among microcontroller and DSP vendors to protect investments in software development by offering compatible ...

Back when I started in electronics, workingon discrete, 4-bit processors, I couldn’t haveknown I would one day have to worry abouthow big an integer was or discuss processorsin a Gulliver’s Travels ...

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EF3-U9Lb12k&hl=en&fs=1&] Watching this video, it doesn’t seem very much more than a demo for a rather anonymous-looking ...

SAN JOSE, California — The Apple II computer is long gone, but its heart beats on in the developing world, where 8-bit computers sell for as little as $12. Now, computer scientists see a way of using ...

Normally when we bring you news of a retrocomputing design, it will centre around a single processor. At its heart will be a 6502, a Z80, or perhaps a 6809. There will be a host of support chips, some ...

Some of the most interesting projects in computing are the "Just for fun," builds that individuals dream up. A year and a half ago, we met the Megaprocessor, a room-scale CPU implementation with each ...

is a senior editor and author of Notepad, who has been covering all things Microsoft, PC, and tech for over 20 years. Pregnancy tests used to be fairly simple sticks you peed on, but the move to ...

Not content with your new, 1.4-billion-transistor Ivy Bridge processor? Maybe it runs too hot, or lacks the polygon-pushing powers that you require? Well, I've got just the thing for you: How about ...

An earlier logic chip used as a building block for CPUs. Bit slice processors used arithmetic logic units (ALUs) that typically came in 4-bit increments, although 1- and 2-bit devices were also made.

As an electronics rookie, one of the first things they tell you when they teach you about logic gates is, “You can make everything from a combination of NAND gates”. There usually follows a ...