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Gene Breniman's Embedded Systems Blog
Gene Breniman has over 30 years experience in design and development of hardware and software for embedded systems. He has worked in a variety of fields, including avionics, life sciences and automatic test equipment engineering.
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Lightweight hardware abstraction
Some lessons are tougher than others to master. You would think that hard fought battles would be easier to remember, but sometimes it just does not work that way. Recently, I was asked to...
posted by Gene Breniman on Jan 31 2012 under Software Development Comments (0) |
A true pioneer passes away... A farewell to Ritchie.
We all have our heroes. We all have people who were important to our professional developments. For me, Dennis Ritchie was one of those people. I was an early adopter of the C progra...
posted by Gene Breniman on Oct 15 2011 under Software Development | Linux Comments (5) |
Deeply embedded design example - Logic replacement
I have always believed that some of the low-cost, low-pin count, low-resource microprocessors would make an excellent choice for the replacement of discrete logic components. In these cases...
posted by Gene Breniman on Jul 9 2011 under PIC | Software Development | Hardware Development | Tutorials Comments (0) |
VHDL tutorial - A practical example - part 3 - VHDL testbench
In part 1 (http://www.embeddedrelated.com/showarticle/85.php) of this series we focused on the hardware design, including some of the VHDL definitions of the I/O characteristics of the CPLD part. ...
posted by Gene Breniman on Jun 25 2011 under VHDL programming | Hardware Development | Tutorials Comments (4) |
VHDL tutorial - A practical example - part 2 - VHDL coding
In part 1 of this series we focused on the hardware design, including some of the VHDL definitions of the I/O characteristics of the CPLD part. In part 2, we will describe the VHDL logic of...
posted by Gene Breniman on May 27 2011 under Software Development | VHDL programming | Hardware Development | Tutorials Comments (0) |
VHDL tutorial - A practical example - part 1 - Hardware
In previous posts I described some simple VHDL examples. This time let's try something a little more complex. This is part one of a multiple part article. This is intended to be a detailed...
posted by Gene Breniman on May 18 2011 under VHDL programming | Hardware Development | Tutorials Comments (0) |
Size matters - System success depends on initial design
Too many times during the initial phases of system design, opposing interests start fighting for valuable resources, sometimes without even knowing that they are. Case in point, a development pr...
posted by Gene Breniman on Apr 23 2011 under Software Development | Products | Hardware Development Comments (1) |
A part of history
This past weekend I had the pleasure of attending the 40-year anniversary celebration of the formation of my high school's radio station (KVHS). The current students and staff of KVHS hoste...
posted by Gene Breniman on Dec 23 2009 under Miscellaneous | Education Comments (0) |
I owe, I owe, so off to work I go.....
The economy hit my start-up plans pretty toughly. My step-daughter and I were working out of a common pool of money (our savings account), and in the end, she won out. She is in her ...
posted by Gene Breniman on Dec 23 2009 under Business | Education Comments (0) |
Software Prototyping
In my recent blog entry on the product development process (way down, near the end of the entry), I wrote the following:"I continue these sorts of tests, building more and more complexity, until ...
posted by Gene Breniman on Aug 19 2008 under Software Development | Hardware Development Comments (1) |
Bringing up Baby - product development thoughts
Things have just started to get exciting. After months of defining, specifying and designing my latest product, I finally have semi-functional prototypes. After a few side steps during the building ...
posted by Gene Breniman on Aug 15 2008 under Software Development | Hardware Development Comments (5) |
VHDL tutorial - Creating a hierarchical design
In earlier blog entries I introduced some of the basic VHDL concepts. First, developing a function ('VHDL tutorial') and later verifying and refining it ('VHDL tutorial - part 2 - Testbench' and 'VHDL...
posted by Gene Breniman on May 22 2008 under VHDL programming | Tutorials Comments (6) |
VHDL tutorial - combining clocked and sequential logic
In an earlier article on VHDL programming ("VHDL tutorial" and "VHDL tutorial - part 2 - Testbench", I described a design for providing a programmable clock divider for a ADC sequencer. In this exampl...
posted by Gene Breniman on Mar 3 2008 under VHDL programming | Tutorials Comments (0) |
Small business tackling big jobs.
Greetings and a Happy New Year to all!I have been extremely busy the last few months tackling a small job that turned into a big job. A few months ago, while working on starting my own company and pr...
posted by Gene Breniman on Jan 6 2008 under Business | Consulting Comments (0) |
Great men in my life.
In my first post on this site (Will work for Tools!), I mentioned how my Grandfather had inspired me to become an Engineer. Today, I write in sadness about the loss of three men, all this year, and ...
posted by Gene Breniman on Nov 9 2007 Comments (2) |
VHDL tutorial - part 2 - Testbench
In an earlier article I walked through the VHDL coding of a simple design. In this article I will continue the process and create a test bench module to test the earlier design. The Xilinx ISE environ...
posted by Gene Breniman on Oct 30 2007 under VHDL programming | Tutorials Comments (3) |
VHDL tutorial
(Follow up articles: VHDL tutorial - part 2 - Testbench , VHDL tutorial - combining clocked and sequential logic , VHDL tutorial - Creating a hierarchical design ) &nbs...
posted by Gene Breniman on Oct 4 2007 under VHDL programming Comments (7) |
No, I'm not retired!
For many years now, I have been looking for the right opportunity to strike out on my own. At first I had a few ideas that looked promising, but I was not in a position to leave my full-time employme...
posted by Gene Breniman on Sep 26 2007 Comments (1) |
Will work for tools!
I have always believed that tools are necessary to the creative process. This is something I learned early in life and it's a lesson that has stuck with me to this day. When I was 7 years old, I made...
posted by Gene Breniman on Sep 23 2007 under Tools Comments (2) |