Industry Expert Blogs

I was a bit frustrated this weekend after installing a digital light timer—yes a light timer. As an engineer this should be no big deal, and for the most part, I installed it without shocking myself or other major problems. This timer had all the bells and whistles. It knows about time zones, adjusts daily for dawn and dusk. It even adjusts for daylight savings time. The problem came when I tried to program this device. It took me two days to get it right (I actually had to read the instructions)! How did a very simple function like a switch become so complicated?

I had a similar thought last week as discussions have intensified around the need for embedded consumer SoCs to support hardware cache coherency. How did connecting one core to another (a switch and router) become so complicated?

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