definition

2 Articles

We’re Using The Word Firmware Wrong

September 29, 2017 by 123 Comments

I had an interesting discussion the other day about code written for an embedded system. I was speaking with Voja Antonic about ‘firmware’. The conversation continued forward but I noticed that he was calling it ‘software’. We later discussed it and Voja told me he thought only the parts of the code directly interacting with the microcontroller were firmware; the rest falls under the more generic term of software. It really had me wondering where firmware stops being firmware and is merely software?

The topic has remained on my mind and I finally got around to doing some dictionary searches. I’m surprised that I’ve been using the word differently and I think most of the people I’ve heard use it are doing the same — at least as far as dictionary definitions are concerned. My go to sources are generally Merriam-Webster and Oxford English dictionaries and both indicate that firmware is a type of software that is indelible:

Permanent software programmed into a read-only memory.

computer programs contained permanently in a hardware device (such as a read-only memory)

According to this definition, I have never written a single bit of firmware. Everything I have written has been embedded software. But surely this is a term that must change with the times as technology progress so I kept digging.

Continue reading “We’re Using The Word Firmware Wrong” →

Fixing The Ampere: Redefining The SI Unit

August 30, 2016 by 105 Comments

We all know that it’s not the volts that kill you, it’s the amps. But exactly how many electrons per second are there in an amp? It turns out that nobody really knows. But according to a press release from the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), that’s all going to change in 2018.

The amp is a “metrological embarrassment” because it’s not defined in terms of any physical constants. Worse, it’s not even potentially measurable, being the “constant current which, if maintained in two straight parallel conductors of infinite length, of negligible circular cross-section, and placed 1 meter apart in vacuum, would produce between these conductors a force equal to 2 x 10–7 newton per meter of length.” You can’t just order a spool of infinite length and negligible cross-section wire and have it express shipped.

So to quantify the exact number of electrons per second in an amp, the folks at NIST need an electron counter. This device turns out to be a super-cooled, quantum mechanical gate that closes itself once an electron has passed through. Repeatedly re-opening one of these at gigahertz still provides around a picoamp. Current (tee-hee) research is focused on making practical devices that push a bit more juice. Even then, it’s likely that they’ll need to gang 100 of these gates to get even a single microamp. But when they do, they’ll know how many electrons per second have passed through to a few tens of parts per billion. Not too shabby.

We had no idea that the amp was indirectly defined, but now that we do, we’re looking forward to a better standard. Thanks, NIST!

Thanks [CBGB123B] for the tip!