The death of microprocessors
by Nick Tredennick & Brion Shimamoto
Dry your eyes. Microprocessors have had a relatively long and useful life, but it's now time for them to step into a supervisory mode. As the industry adapts to changes in demand, reconfigurable logic will take over the lead.

Reconfigurable illogic
by Rich Belgard
Some say the microprocessor is dead. Not so fast, says industry expert Rich Belgard. The microprocessor isn't going away. As with the laws of motion, you can't just shift energy or complexity around without paying the price. Here's a more optimistic prognosis for the microprocessor.

Implementing SSL on 8-bit micros
by Timothy Stapko
The Secure Sockets Layer protocol is used on every web browser and web server to encrypt secure transactions. But SSL is not just the province of 32-bit microprocessors. It can be used on low-cost 8-bitters as well.

Programmer's Toolbox
All about Quine-McClusky
by Jack Crenshaw
Using K-maps to simplify logic equations in hardware and software makes a lot of sense, but Quine-McClusky is more a systematic approach.

Break Points
Codifying good software design
by Jack G. Ganssle
“Safety first” is a simple motto forever complicated by the complacency and greed of human nature. The story of U.S. fire codes has plenty to teach system designers.

Beginner's Corner
Introduction to Introduction to fixed-width integers
by Michael Barr
For embedded programmers the most important improvement to C in the C99 standards is the new stdint.h header file.

Programming Pointers
Mapping memory
by Dan Saks
Memory-mapped I/O is something you can do reasonably well in standard C and C++.

#include
We're all kings now
by Jim Turley
It's rare that construction outstrips creation. We've always been able to design things we can't build-tall buildings, flying cars, or talking robots that are impossible to construct without some breakthrough in manufacturing. But with embedded chips we can build more than we can design.