In the eighties, computer processors became faster and faster, while memory access times stagnated and hindered additional performance increases. Something had to be done to speed up memory access and ...

Microprocessor-based systems are ideal for executing an essentially infinite number of tasks. The host microprocessors support a limited set of instructions that can combine to produce incredibly ...

The processors in today’s computers have grown tremendously in performance, capabilities and complexity over the past decade. Clock speed has skyrocketed, and size has dwindled, even as the number of ...

Figure 1: The electro-optic system on a chip. We use the direct chip-to-chip optical connectivity of the microprocessor chip to build a photonically connected main memory system for the microprocessor ...

The performance of a business computer at everyday tasks largely depends on two factors: its processor speed and the amount of memory it has. The processor's speed comes from its clock, a timing ...

This application note describes a simple and efficient FPGA configuration method that utilizes a microprocessor to configure an FPGA device from a Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI) flash memory. This ...

Michael Kanellos is editor at large at CNET News.com, where he covers hardware, research and development, start-ups and the tech industry overseas. A correction was made to this story. Read below for ...