Design of anything, from an ERP application to an embedded software system to a hardware device to a mechanical object, is done at some level of abstraction. Simply, a level of abstraction is the ...

Machine code: the ones and zeroes are an abstract representation of the electromagnetic signals flowing through the wires and computer chips. Assembler: hides away the machine code, allowing a ...

The amount of complexity by which a system is viewed or programmed. The higher the level, the less detail. The lower the level, the more detail. The highest level of abstraction is the entire system.

About 15 years ago, the assumption in the EDA industry was that system design would be inevitable. The transition from gate-level design to a new entry point at the register transfer level (RTL) ...

The Innovation Station combines Altium Designer unified design software and the Desktop NanoBoard reconfigurable hardware platform for a full hardware/software design system. Daughter boards provide a ...

IP reuse has reduced the urgency for a higher level of abstraction in complex system-level design, but that still could change. Chip designers have been constantly searching for a hardware description ...

Software that translates a high-level request into the low-level commands required to perform the operation. The most common abstraction layer is the programming interface (API) between an application ...

Let’s just assume that after adding communications costs and management overhead, the cost to move offshore to a low-cost country is half of the cost of having engineers in a high-cost location. This ...

David Wheeler is often credited with the following aphorism: “All problems in computer science can be solved by another level of indirection." Too often, Wheeler is misquoted, and software engineers ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I analyze trends and current events in technology, marketing and AI. As business leaders look to machine learning and artificial ...